6601

Blues can still invade other blues as long as they have sinned.

It’s not Seath, seath doesn’t have scales, and we saw giants in das1. These are different giants.

6602

Where did we see giants in any other Souls game? Besides concept art.

And yeah, I just get confused sometimes because Freja is actually Seath and they’re all in the same room. :rofl:

6603

Solo killed Seath. Respect for Nito went down. How Pinwheel managed to steal his power is beyond me. Pinwheel died in 3 attacks. He’s a damn joke.

6604

You can use Bonfire Ascetics to respawn bosses to hit your three survivals - I recommend using [details=Spoiler]The Rotten and The Prowling Magus [/details] in conjunction with the Red-Eye Ring…

Spoiler

There are two giants in a cave you access by dropping down ledges in the Black Gulch - they give you one. The other is from the Ancient Dragon, so good luck with that…

He is - I think I one-shotted him on my SL1 run. It’s a shame, as his music and stage are excellent…

6605

The Giant Blacksmith comes to mind. Dude had a face and everything. I honestly don’t like the Giants design in DSII, they look kind of stupid with their holes where their faces should be and their huge shoulders. They are also dumb as fuck, one of the giants in one memory, if you lead him into a tunnel he slips and falls on his back like he stepped on a banana peel letting you wail on him. Literally falls flat on his back, sometimes multiple times in a row. I keep waiting for the story in this game to come together but it all feels so pointless for some reason. I’m trying to kill Vendrick so I can look at his gear descriptions and see if they help shed any light onto the narrative.

6606

I can’t wait to see some SL1, Company of Champions covenant, NG+7 challenge runs

6607

LOL… This guy. :rofl:

6608

Well it’s suppose to be a STR/FTH build, pure melee. I noticed some people were trying DEX/FTH, but I went with STR. Everyone seems to agree that the Defender Greatsword is the weapon of choice for this build, and I also heard people were netting 540 dmg per swing with it.

My build is similar to this vid vvv

6609

Trust me, the story’s there. :tup:

Also we only see two true and alive giants in this game. The Last Giant and the Lord of Giants. The other ones are petrified in their place and allow you to enter their memories. If you’ll notice, the game actually refers to those super buff mini giants as “Golems”, and the golems look incredibly distinct from what an actual giant looks like. The most obvious difference being their size.

I’m sure they’re of the same species, but the golems just seem to be their infantry class or something. An actual giant is much more of a force to be reckoned with.

When someone uses the word “giant” in these games, I assume they’re referring to the species. So while the Giant Blacksmith is huge, I don’t think it’s actually referring to him as being one of the giants of legend. Whatever the Giant Blacksmith is , is the same species that Gough is. And Gough was not a giant.

6610

Hawkeye Gough and the Giant Blacksmith are giants in das1.

6611

Naw I’m not saying the game doesn’t have a story, I’m just saying that they are kind of doing a piss job of telling it.

[details=Spoiler] I spent the first 25 hours chasing down 4 powerful souls because the Firekeeper told me to, cuz with them I can go to Drangleic Castle and meet King Vendrick and the majority of that felt like aimless wandering, and once I get to Drangleic Castle the son of bitch isn’t there! So I push on more and more and another 5 or some hours later I finally get to meet King Vendrick…and he’s hollowed the fuck out. So I take his ring and go through the door int he woods and venture through more dangerous as fuck shit to meet an ancient Dragon (I thought I killed the last of these guys…TWICE, in Dark Souls 1, why are there more of them?) and he gives me an item but doesn’t tell me what to do with it! Just “Here. What to do with it? Fuck if I know.” So I look up where to go, check out the 3 Giant Trees in the woods, collect their souls, kill their King, and I still have no fucking idea why I am doing any of this.I really have no clue what is going on.

Dark Souls 1 on the other hand starts with Oscar telling you about a bell and how ringing it will shed light on your undead predicament, then the Crestfallen Warrior telling you about there being two bells, then Frampt tell you about needing the Lord Vessel so you can succeed the god of the world, then Gwenever gives you the Lord Vessel expounds a bit more on you succeeding Gwyn, Frampt tells you about needing to power up the Lord Vessel with Lord Souls, you do so, you get to end game, you succeed (Or turn away) lord Gwyn bobs your uncle. There’s a relevant plot thread through the game that pertains to what you are doing while the lore fills in or hints at all the blanks in said narrative fleshing it out. It seems like Dark Souls II just kind sends you on your marry way without contextualizing what the fuck your doing at all, you’re just doing shit cuz a woman in green told you to and there is very little to no context involved in what you’re doing. You’re just…doing…cuz you’re undead and I guess you have nothing better to do with your time.

Of course I have not finished the game nor really dug into the Lore yet so maybe there will be stuff there to shed light, but a lot of this game sure feels like an excuse to have more Dark Souls then it feels like something made to rival what came before. I mean even going on your Giants thing you may be right at this point about them, but I would bet with 100% certainty that when DS1 was released the Giant Blacksmith, and Gough, and the guys in Sense Fortress (and I guess Gwenevere to) where all intended to be from the Giant Race. They are the only things in that game that fit the description of them, the way buildings seem to be built to accommodate them also seem to imply they are the Giants being referred to. Dark Souls II just seems to toss them aside and introduce new Giants without any thought as to how this effects the actual lore of the world of Dark Souls (Same with all the fuckin Dragons man, why the fuck are there Dragons still alive and tons of them to?), now what the fuck are the Giants from Dark Souls 1 supposed to be? And what the fuck is Vendrick supposed to be? He’s nearly as big as the Last Giant and the King of Giants. And at times I don’t even feel like the lore is doing a very good job of telling you or even hinting at anything interesting either. The Giants Souls say you can only use them to gain more souls and that’s it…except it’s not as they are pretty fucking key to making the Vendrick fight an actual fight instead of a boring as fuck slog. Why don’t they even hint that there might be something more to them, or even tell us a little bit of something about the giants themselves? [/details]

I feel like they are leaning way way to heavily on the lore aspect of the Souls narrative and it’s leaving a big fucking hole in the player relevant part of the narrative. It feels weird to say but I really agree with the Yatzee review for this game in that “Yay more Souls, but it sure does feel sequel-y and phoned in at times.”

Edit: I finished the game tonight. Those last two bosses are piss easy if you summon Vendrick and Jeigo. I also managed to kill Vendrick to. Now just cleaning out the shops of items i want but have been holding off on like the Human Effigies, and any rare stones I feel like having extras of, and gathering up some armor i haven’t gotten yet like Vendrick’s. Looking over the list of boss souls to trade in to, any I don’t trade I’ll probably consume aside from the 4 giant souls I have. I tried fighting the ancient dragon but whenever dude flew into the air and blew fire down at me i got roasted. I never got close with him out of like 4 or 5 tries so i might put him off, I dunno. Haven’t decided. Overall game was great, really liked it. Not as enamored with it as I am the first one, I have complaints, but still really solid entry and I look forward to digging into the lore and starting a NG+ run. Want dat Heide Armor.

6612

Roughly 80 hours in, I finally beat the dang thing too. So now I can finally start reading these here threads!

See, I went in as blind as possible, and avoided all FAQs and such outside of two things: 1) How to get the white soapstone (where I learned that I need to talk to someone at least twice more than I think I need to after I’ve done something new that might affect them), and 2) when I got stuck, thinking I’d exhausted every area in the game, but it turns out I forgot all about a certain moving tunnel contraption in Majula.

EDIT: Hah, turns out Yahtzee had that exact same problem. Though I will give the game some leeway in that there’s a blatant “you can’t do anything about this thing yet but maybe later” thing in that room. Aaaaand the only reason I hadn’t gone looking there yet is that I was doing a build that made me have no interest in looking for a certain person when she went to Majula.

Anyway, at that point the Covetous Demon was easier than some regular enemies I’d encountered up to that point. As for a certain poison boss…

Spoiler

I couldn’t figure out how to stop the windmill on my own (which in hindsight makes me feel pretty dumb), so rather than start poking into FAQs in trying to beat Medusa, I pretty much attuned all my most powerful pyromancies and bashed her with them as fast as I could. Took me a few tries, but I got it. It was kinda hilarious, actually… Every attempt took me about a minute. When I finally killed her, I think it took me about 30 seconds.

Hardest boss in the game for me? As a squishy magic-user, easily Smelter Demon. Only boss in the game where I summoned an actual human player (though I did get an AI helper here and there).

Still haven’t taken out Vendrick. I tried attacking him a few times, but I’m missing a few giant souls. Also a mechanic I was completely ignorant of! I also have yet to take out the Ancient Dragon, and there are some doors I haven’t been able to unlock either.

Ironic that, coming from Dark Souls 1, I tried not to overlevel so I could keep my Bellbro invasions up, but now I’m reading that it has less to do with levels and more to do with some “soul memory” jiggerypokery. Kinda glad I stayed at level 105 anyway. At that level I wasn’t exactly having a tough time, and I was doing well in PVP.

Once I’ve done all I wanna do in NG, I might poke into Hexes in NG+. I’ve already bought a bunch of them, even though I focused solely on regular magic on this character.

Why magic? Because I hadn’t tried that yet. First playthrough in DS1 was an all-rounder with Faith, then when Artorias dropped I did a new playthrough where I focused entirely on Dex statwise and added Pyromancy to my arsenal.

Now I’m torn between doing an all-new playthrough with a high-poise Strength build, or to continue into NG+. Those of you who’ve started the second journey: Is there a lot that’s actually different besides stronger enemies and access to new spells?

6613

NG+ has more areas IIRC

6614

DS2 question: so, you can just warp to any bonfire, right? Can you do this early in the game or is this an ability that is obscure to find and takes a while?Because the backtracking is killing me in DS1.

6615

DS2 allows warping from the get-go. Which is good, because you need to get back to the hub to level up.

6616

DSII is definitely built as a continuation of DSI - there are numerous points in DSII that are there as a response to player experiences in DSI. Best example I can give is the Belfry Luna boss where it’s similar to a DSI boss, times 2.5. They’ve placed a ‘Muse’ message for use, saying ‘Not this part again…’ the repetition is deliberate, I’m sure.

Lore stuff

[details=Spoiler]It’s stated that Vendrick created the Golems from the Giants somewhere, I’m guessing he kind of hollowed them out then imbued them with power or something.The story to me seems to be that thousands of years after the Kiln of the First Flame was re-lit, Nashandra arrives in Drangleic to find King Vendrick. Some people have speculated she is the reincarnation of Manus. She convinces Vendrick to steal something from the Giants in an attempt to undo his Curse, but I don’t know if he was Undead before or after she arrived. I reckon that ‘thing’ was the Kiln of the First Flame which the Giants were looking after for some reason.

Nashandra being the new Manus, and the Kiln being moved to Drangleic, might explain why the second boss souls refer to bosses of Dark Souls 1, which were necessary to access TKOTFF.
[/details]

6617

Where exactly are you guys getting this from? Just because they’re large humanoid creatures they’re automatically related to actual Giants?

By that logic, Vendrick is a giant.
And the Tower Knight.
And Nashandra.
And The Mirror Knight.
And the Iron King.
And the Ruin Sentinels.

And any other large humanoid.

6618

Well it is stated that Vendrick took the power of the Giants to try and cure his curse

6619

Have any of you taken a look at the body laying on the ground in the room you find Vendrick? I want to say it’s Gwyn but I can’t tell for the life of me what it actually is. If it actually is Gwyn, then that’s a huge deal because it changes a lot of story elements.

Also, Vendrick did journey to obtain the their power and hold back the curse, but Nashandra was pulling the strings behind it all for her own purposes. Since she is a fragmented piece of Manus, her main goal was to have you as the player become the new king and successor to the Giant’s power so that she could gain even more power.

Alongside other things, a lot of people are thinking that the thing Vendrick traveled to the land of giants for was also the Lordvessel.

6620

This poison place is FUCKED up