Sounds exactly like Dark souls prepatch, and Post patch.
Pre-patch certainly. It’s kind of odd they made almost the exact same mistake with physical weapon scaling again. Even then, Dark Souls had some mechanical tricks you could learn that actually made pvp interesting imo. Unfortunately they’re now gone for the most part.
I disagree with this in a way but at the same time I was tanked out when I got to Gaping dragon the first time.
I think the PvP is better mechanically honestly, it’s just that magic and buffs are way fucking overpowered. It doesn’t make any sense for a Blacksteel Katana with S scaling and 70 DEX to do less than an unbuffed dark infused Blacksteel. I can understand it doing a bit less than a buff because you CAN run out the time on a buff, but it shouldn’t be weaker in WITHOUT a buff even.
Is Physical scaling really bad or is Phys defense armor just really good and used by everyone?
Before I took a break from DaS2 everyone just went with the heaviest armor phys armor they could find with little defense in anything else.
Resonant weapon is 50% more dark damage for 60 secs on weapon btw. Dark weapon and most other weapon buffs are 30% for 90 secs.
There’s also a ring that boosts dark damage by 10% or so at the cost of life per swing iirc.
Increases power of hexes by 20% but costs 30 HP per cast
Durability: 100
Weight: 0.2
There’s also some weapon with pretty good natural scaling towards some elements when fully upgraded. Crypt blacksword has A scaling towards dark so when you infuse it with Dark and then resonant weapon, I hear it hits for upwards 1k per regular swing with much of its damage coming from the dark element, but apparently it has a meh moveset and is heavy as fuck weighs 24.
Chaos blade has B scaling towards Dark when fully upgraded and so on.
In other news
Another broken ass combo lol
My bad, forgot the exact numbers on resonant weapon.
Lol at dual wielding avelyne. I had someone do that exact same thing to me last night. It’s incredibly difficult to do anything about it. It will still do good damage through most shields and in most cases will break your guard. Good luck trying to roll past the bolts, I swear to god they are laser guided.
It’s a combination of both really. You can stack physical defense much higher than any of the elements, but physical scaling is still pretty bad. As Gasaraki was saying, an S scaling black steel katana does not hit as hard as a dark infused black steel katana. It just makes no sense, someone at FROM fucked up.
I personally think I should be able to use resonant weapon on my fists
Well i got the boss of Last Bastille. I like the game, it’s fun but there’s some thorns in my side I gotta let out at the moment.
I’m sure my frustration at the moment comes from needing to learn the game of course, it was the same for Demon’s and Dark Souls 1. With that said, the life penalty for dieing is fucking retarded. I didn’t like it in Demon’s Souls and while it’s not as harsh here as it was there for the most part, it’s almost more annoying here because you’re watching it slowly chip away, almost like it’s taunting you. Each time you die it just get smaller and smaller until you are to that 50% threshold. Honestly dieing and having your souls sitting there in a precarious position of being permanently lost feels like punishment enough, I’m really not sure why they felt the need to bring back the health penalty, you’re getting punished 3 times for dieing once. I’m sure it’s something I’ll be able to get over in the long run, but I don’t think it’s a mechanic I’ll ever like or feel was a good idea. I was really happy to see it not return in Dark Souls so I’m disappointed to see it back in Dark Souls II.
Also it seems like they traded off making actually difficult enemies to fight with just pumping up the number of them that attack you at once. Again probably just need to learn the game, but opening a door in Lost Bastille and having 6 fuckin dudes poor out of it all swinging great swords with reckless abandon feels like a shallow way of making the encounter hard.
This one isn’t a complaint but more of an observation. In one night i ran into 3 damn bosses. Wow. I have no idea what where I’m going or what I’m doing but it seems like the boss fights are packed really tight together. Is that true for the whole game? Once i got to the Last Giant fight the bosses just seem to come with minimal exploration. I found the big Knight at the top of the Fort like 2 minutes after the Giant fight, and then 15 minutes later had run into the 3 spear wielding bitches in lost Bastille…Like damn man.
I also don’t understand why they decided to make you go back to Marjula just to lvl up. That seems like a step backwards from DS1 and is kind of killing my immersion in the game cuz I’m staring at loading screens a lot more often then before. Used to be I didn’t see loading screens until I died or had unlocked porting and chose to port somewhere out of the way. Now I gotta port every time I want to lvl up which means loading screen to get to Marjula, then loading screen to get back to where I already was, when you used to just be able to lvl up at the damn bonfire you sat your ass down at to begin with. The loading screens in DS1 never made me impatient cuz it was breathing time where i could reflect on how I fucked up. Here I find myself going “Jesus these load screens are annoying” cuz I’m seeing them a lot. 
I dunno, it just seems like some of the design decisions made for this game where made simply because whoever was in charge liked Demon’s Souls more then Dark Souls and if that’s the case the guy shoulda just made another Demon’s Souls instead of trying to jam that games design choices into Dark Souls where they really don’t seem to fit.
Oh and last thing, O + Down to slide down ladders is fucking annoying when coming off of DS1 where it was just circle. It worked fine there, I never accidentally slide down a ladder in DS1 so I dunno why they felt the need to make it two commands instead of the original one that worked just fine.
Anyway I don’t mean to bitch and complain, I’m probably just frustrated from getting my ass handed to me a good deal tonight so the things that are rubbing me wrong are standing out. I will say game looks really pretty, Marjula looks great, I spent a lot of time just looking around that place and checkin shit out, I like the way all the gear I’ve found looks so far, and the way clothes seem to have actual physics is really great. Starting Knight gear looks dope (tho I already moved up to the Elite Knight Chest.) Will be diggin in more tomorrow.
So I’ve finally finished the game and am messing about before NG+.
I did have a question, though - the whole… [details=Spoiler]use the Ashen Mist Heart to enter Giants’ memories and get their souls to let you damage Vendrick[/details] …thing - was that ever actually explained or hinted anywhere? I got it by some experimentation and just generally trawling about the place, but it seems a bit of a leap.
I assume I just missed an item description or piece of dialogue, as with the… [details=Spoiler]Giant’s Kinship[/details] …malarkey.
That whole bit felt a lot like the end of The Wind Waker though, to be honest… [details=Spoiler]making you go and get macguffins for no real reason other than extending the game[/details]…which isn’t a good thing - although the rest of both games is good enough to survive it.
As I say, probably me being stupid. It usually is. [details=Spoiler](It’s only after visiting this thread post-game I’ve realised I could have fought the Ancient Dragon, for instance.)[/details] Loved the game overall, though, and looking forward to NG+!
PvP is still a worthless laggy clusterfuck, though. Co-op all the way!
@crotchpuncha There is a ring that caps life loss at 75%. And another that boosts max life by a bit. There are a good amount of optional bosses. I have had days in which I have slain three bosses one right after the other. Having to always go to Majula to lvl up is stupid. No idea why they did that but I’ll take it since they gave us fast travel off the bat.
Restarted my Dark Souls playthrough. Time to raid Sen’s Fortress. Those poor Titanite Demons.
Head towards the Heide’s Tower of Flame. The ring of binding I believe it’s called is there and it reduces your maximum health to only 75% instead of 50%. I haven’t used an effigies since I got it and I don’t even feel the effects of the missing the 25% anymore.
Lol I love the new health system. It sucks complete dick to deal with but what else would you expect from Dark Souls?
It’s one of the big reasons why I believe this game is a lot harder than the first one too. And it raises the importance of saving your effigies and using them wisely.
Literally the only reason I used Humanities in 1 was to play online and re kindle bonfires, and that just seems like wasted potential to me. This system is much more brutal. Which is better.
[details=Spoiler]
The only way you can possibly figure out what those giant souls are for is if you somehow had the foresight to piece together random tidbits of the lore. They make it pretty near impossible to figure that out just by going through the game. Even so, Vendrick gained his power by stepping on the giants backs, so it makes sense you’d need a lot of their souls to even damage him. For every soul you get, his defense goes from x32, to x16, to x8, to x2, to normal defense depending on how many giant souls you have on you respectively. But going back down there and killing him is completely optional too, you only need the Kinship Soul to lure Nashandra down to the Throne of Want, so…considering you don’t even have to go out and find the other memories I’d say that was a really incredible point in the game. This is the first time we actually get to see Giants in person.
What I don’t understand is why the Ancient Dragon has the memory key.
Also, going back to the beginning of time was EPIC. [/details]
Finished my first run, pretty satisfied overall. Not sure where I place it yet, I need to do a few more playthroughs and see if I get hooked, as in thinking about shit I wanna do in the game when I’m at work or out doing errands. I’d say my only major gripe is the world set up. I feel like Majula is an octopus body and each tentacle is a designated path you follow through to the end and then repeat. Part 1 had more of a neighborhood type feel. I loved how you’d take an elevator or open a door that would link to a previous area that you never would have guessed was connected. Also not sure about the NPCs yet, Part 1 NPCs are a tough act to follow in just about every aspect. I need to dig deeper into the 2 cast to see if they stack up, but my initial impression is although I like most of them, I don’t think they’ll top Part 1, just an early guess on my part at least. Overall though, I’d say they delivered what I wanted and I’ll be spending a lot of time on this for at least a few months.
My apologies for the double posting of this, but my friend and I just rewatched a portion of this twice we were laughing so hard. For anyone that doesn’t want to watch the whole thing, just start at 2:35:50 and witness DSP’s experience with The Looking Glass Knight. It completely breaks him :lol:
Question About Respecs:
Do they allow you to reallocate your points(ex. take a point out of Dex and put it into Int), or are your stats just reset and you have to grind souls again?
Its a genuine respec. You allocate what you already had wherever you want.
So, my good luck against those Gecko’s ran out and I was cursed and killed. Went to Londo Ruins, it’s fun to finally be able to kill ghosts and it took me 3-4 tries to get to that priest. Worst thing is that they can attack through walls and blocking kinda’ works on them because of the weird angles they can come from. Found out later that the priest can forgive your sins and restore NPC’s that you’ve killed and/or injured and won’t talk to you which is good because I attacked that …er… thing behind the bars in the sewer thinking it was an enemy. Later, I tried to activate that lift and open the door and no go. Took a leap of faith and tried to jump down the lift and died, no biggie, just lost 7K souls.
lol yea Curse fucking sucks. You can buy buy Purging Stones from the guy you met in the Church Tower after ringing the first bell, or from the old Hollow Female Merchant in the waterway leading into Undead Burg. She’s back by the shortcut to the Depths behind the gate (I think that may be the person behind the bars you attacked lol). The guy on top of the church in New Londo Ruins can also heal curse for the price of one humanity.
Edit: That reminds me I wanted to ask what Curse does in DSII. The second boss cursed me, but all it seemed to do was make me Hollow without killing me. Is that all it does in this one?
Yep, I was able to undo the Curse.
I still don’t know if I like this game or not.