Dark Souls II - share your experiences, stories and builds!

Started by Hemingway, March 26, 2014, 12:14:17 PM

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Inkidu

Quote from: Shjade on April 24, 2014, 11:12:04 AM
Nope. You can fight them just fine really, once you get the hang of it, and learn how to fight without locking on. They're hard to see, but they're not invincible or anything.

The enemies themselves are basically NPC player phantoms which, as far as I can tell, are basically wearing knight/elite knight armor and equipped with a longsword and a dagger, though they can swap out the offhand dagger for a crossbow to plink at you. They can also guard break and are very happy to do so, so don't turtle up at them or they'll crush your shield and crit your face. Best strat as far as I can tell is to swing at them as they're coming in, or to backstep out of the way of their first attack and punish afterward.

Or, as I mentioned, you can follow the left wall and avoid them altogether. There are a few nice items to be found on the right side, but nothing you can't live without. (The Old Sun Ring is probably the best thing in the fog woods - it's a ring that occasionally causes a fiery explosion around you when you get hit, preventing lockdown by enemies and doing some free fire damage to anyone that sticks around after hitting you, but it's more useful for pvp than pve.)
Now I need to figure out a way past the curse-axe things. They hit for a lot. Thankfully I've got the life-protection ring. It's cheap to get repaired too.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shjade

Quote from: Inkidu on April 24, 2014, 02:08:09 PM
Now I need to figure out a way past the curse-axe things.
The same way you get past most things in Dark Souls: just run around them if you don't want to fight them. >.>
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Revelation

The things in that area causing curse are actually the urns, not the giant furry looking axe guys. I found it was best to try and lure the first two that approach you back to the bonfire area, eventually they begin to move away and you can take them out one at a time. Just be careful of the giant basilisk.

Inkidu

Quote from: Changingsaint on April 24, 2014, 07:27:35 PM
The things in that area causing curse are actually the urns, not the giant furry looking axe guys. I found it was best to try and lure the first two that approach you back to the bonfire area, eventually they begin to move away and you can take them out one at a time. Just be careful of the giant basilisk.
No if those guys hit you with the axe the curse meter starts rising.

I know I could run, but there is that giant frog looking thing, and I mean giant. So I want to clear out the curse axes first.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shjade

Yeah, the Lion warriors can curse you, too. On the upside, curse isn't as bad in DkS2 as it was in DkS1. In 1, curse instantly killed you and you revived with 50% max hp until you got uncursed. In 2, getting cursed just "kills" you, in that it takes your max hp down one notch, as if you'd died, but doesn't kill you outright. You're still hollowed by being cursed, but at least you don't get chucked back to the bonfire.
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SinXAzgard21

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand KB+M controls on PC are total crap.  I don't have a wired 360 controller and you can use ds3 tools to trick the system into thinking that a ps3 controller is one...  So in reality PC got the port again... So fucking done with devs getting away with shit like this.
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Hemingway

Quote from: Inkidu on April 24, 2014, 02:08:09 PM
Now I need to figure out a way past the curse-axe things. They hit for a lot. Thankfully I've got the life-protection ring. It's cheap to get repaired too.

Dodge them. It's really difficult to stagger them, even with a heavy weapon like a Greatsword. Which means they're still going to attack you back after you've hit them a few times.

Try to fight only one at a time, too. If they start alternating their attacks, it's nearly impossible to get an opening. Easily, at least.

Also, stay away from laughing curse jars while you fight them, as those will curse you in seconds if you're not careful. Note that they can actually be under you, or behind walls. Or over you, I suppose.

Inkidu

I don't dodge. I'm wearing the Land's-name-as-adjective armor. I don't roll so much as flop on the ground really slowly. Though I can circle on them, They hit harder than most of the bosses I've fought though. Probably the axes.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shjade

Dodging doesn't always mean rolling. You can let them get into swinging range and then backstep (the roll button without pressing any directions with it), or just run at them and do a 180 when they start to swing, then turn around again for a running attack at them after they swing.

Rolling is just the most expedient option, most of the time.
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Drake Valentine

Ah, good ol death fog area. My favorite place to go PKing. ;) Brings back fond memories.

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Inkidu

Quote from: Shjade on April 25, 2014, 11:02:46 AM
Dodging doesn't always mean rolling. You can let them get into swinging range and then backstep (the roll button without pressing any directions with it), or just run at them and do a 180 when they start to swing, then turn around again for a running attack at them after they swing.

Rolling is just the most expedient option, most of the time.
I'm bad at back stepping. :\
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shjade

*headscratches* I'm not sure I understand how to be bad at it. Are you overestimating how far back the step will take you so you get hit anyway? Or are you just doing it way too late to get to a safe distance?
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Inkidu

Quote from: Shjade on April 25, 2014, 11:24:07 AM
*headscratches* I'm not sure I understand how to be bad at it. Are you overestimating how far back the step will take you so you get hit anyway? Or are you just doing it way too late to get to a safe distance?
First thing.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shjade

Yeah, it's really just sort of a space-creator, so for evasion it's only useful against shorter weapons - knives, short curved swords, clubs, axes, things like that - so it should work reasonably well against lion warriors.
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Inkidu

Quote from: Shjade on April 25, 2014, 11:53:52 AM
Yeah, it's really just sort of a space-creator, so for evasion it's only useful against shorter weapons - knives, short curved swords, clubs, axes, things like that - so it should work reasonably well against lion warriors.
I can circle them and take it on the shield it's just really risky.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

SinXAzgard21

Finally got my controller to work... After hours of trying.  Game is better now, mostly been killing normal enemies, not really knowing where I am going.
If you know me personally, you know how to contact me.

Hemingway

Just keep going in the direction of the enemies, and you'll eventually hit something big.

Then you kill that, and you keep going.

Shjade

Started a new character to try a strength-Dark build, intending to use a Dark Crypt Blacksword for the big numbers...until I discovered the Crypt Blacksword has kind of a crappy moveset. :|

So now I'm just using a +10 Dark Greatsword. Coming to the game with a Dark Souls mentality, it's supremely weird to me to see an elemental version of a weapon straight-up outdamage its regular form. Tested it vs Alonne knights and had average hits of ~716 with the regular Greatsword unbuffed, ~872 buffed with Dark Weapon. With the Dark Greatsword, it was 970 buffed with Dark Weapon (significant damage boost), but more importantly, unbuffed it hit for 723. Even without a Dark Weapon buff on it the Dark Greatsword hit for roughly the same amount of damage as the Greatsword.

My brain is unwilling to accept this data. Yet there it is. No wonder everyone's recommending elemental infused versions of just about every weapon.
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Inkidu

Quote from: Shjade on April 29, 2014, 01:28:28 PM
Started a new character to try a strength-Dark build, intending to use a Dark Crypt Blacksword for the big numbers...until I discovered the Crypt Blacksword has kind of a crappy moveset. :|

So now I'm just using a +10 Dark Greatsword. Coming to the game with a Dark Souls mentality, it's supremely weird to me to see an elemental version of a weapon straight-up outdamage its regular form. Tested it vs Alonne knights and had average hits of ~716 with the regular Greatsword unbuffed, ~872 buffed with Dark Weapon. With the Dark Greatsword, it was 970 buffed with Dark Weapon (significant damage boost), but more importantly, unbuffed it hit for 723. Even without a Dark Weapon buff on it the Dark Greatsword hit for roughly the same amount of damage as the Greatsword.

My brain is unwilling to accept this data. Yet there it is. No wonder everyone's recommending elemental infused versions of just about every weapon.
Wow that's counter-intuitive.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shjade

Well, in theory, it does make sense: an elemental-infused weapon will always have a higher total AR (attack rating) than a normal weapon since its physical damage combined with its elemental damage will be higher than the uninfused weapon's physical damage (In the case of the Greatsword, it's something like 547 AR normal (400 base + 147 scaling) vs 658 elemental (280 phys + 280 element + 50 phys scaling + 48 element scaling), but the way resistance and defense worked in Dark Souls that total AR would end up doing less overall damage because of being "split damage," meaning it's up against multiple forms of resistance rather than only one, so the two types of damage get overall reduced more than the single form of physical damage would by comparison.

In Dark Souls 2, resistances apparently either don't work the same way or they're just lower overall, meaning split damage isn't as big a deal in terms of mitigation as it was in Dark Souls 1.
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Nachtmahr

I was waiting to look into this thread until the game released on PC, to avoid any kind of spoilers and such obviously. I became a massive fan of Dark Souls the first about two months or so before the second one came out. When I heard there was a sequel on it's way I figured it would be the best time to give the original a chance, since it's just been sitting there on my Steam list for so very, very long. And it was great! Loved it a lot.

Then came Dark Souls 2 at last, and I was so incredibly hyped that I felt all but bored doing anything else, but I had to wait for the PC release, because I don't really have the money to throw at a playstation just for a single game, no matter how much I want to get my hands on it.

And then came the disappointment, and it genuinely breaks my heart to say this, but I feel like it's overall not a very good experience, compared to the original, or even on it's own.

The gameplay feels much, much slower, and the rolling and dodging plays a minor part now because all other animations take so long to finish that it's usually too late when you try to get out of the way. Even when you do get a roll off in time, the extreme tracking that enemies will do makes it far less effective to even attempt doing this, rather then just keeping up a shield, or simply backstepping. Apart from the tempo having been slowed to a crawl, there is the issue of bodies, at least in the PC version, living a life of their own as soon as you look away. I know, I know, the Havok engine Shenanigans were also very present in the first game, at times being rather silly, but now you can turn your back on a fresh kill, turn around again, and find him dangling from a wall that his head has apparently gotten stuck in, which really breaks the immersion for me.
That's not even the worst part though, as the difficulty of the game has been somewhat artificially inflated by stuffing unreasonable amounts of enemies into cramped spaces, making for tedious and rather unfair encounters with groups of enemies that will completely rush you. Taking a singly hit this time around is a massive deal of course, since your poise is just broken, leaving you open to countless attacks before getting a chance to react. And then there is the biggest, most heartbreaking issue in my book - The hitbox. The player hitbox is off by quite a bit, compared to how tight and precise it was in Dark Souls the first. Originally you would be able to do all sorts of hair-strand maneuvers, and still avoid taking hits. This time around attacks that are visible not making any kind of contact with hit you and do full damage.

I'm so sad right now, having really tried my best to give this game a fair chance, but with 8 hours played, and a fresh bundle of boss-souls lost because of hitbox issues and enemies doing 180* turns mid-swing.. I just can't bring myself to keep at it. :/
~Await the Dawn With Her Kiss of Redemption, My Firebird!~
~You Were the Queen of the Souls of Man Before There Was the Word~

Shjade

For what it's worth, Nacht, when I first played the game I had pretty much the same reaction as what you're describing.

Rolling felt useless. I could never find the timing to avoid anything the way I could in Dark Souls, enemy tracking made it extremely hard to find the "safe" range to evade attacks entirely (after I gave up on trying to roll through the attacks themselves the way I would have in Dark Souls), none of the early shield options had good stability or 100% physical block for turtle strats, enemies seemed to swing faster and act more aggressively to exacerbate all the above issues - it felt terrible, even if I wasn't really dying from it. Eating a lot of lifegems still felt like I was doing something horribly wrong. Add to that my build decisions were ill-advised and I ended up at SL 100-something just getting absolutely stomped by the area I was in, barely scraping by from room to room.

Something like 20 hours in, I gave up on that character. Just scrapped that run entirely. Instead of continuing to push on with it, I turned it into a stat roller for a bit, using Soul Vessels to rearrange stats and try out some of the other equipment I hadn't used up to that point on that run, basically making it my character planner since there isn't one in website form yet. That helped me get a better handle on how much Adaptability/Agility made the game feel "right" again, or at least closer to it, what kind of weight load I could get away with using the gear I wanted, etc. Helped me unwind that frustration and start over with a clean slate.

New character: everything goes much, much better. Feels more like the Dark Souls I fell in love with. It still has its flaws (some of them glaring - hitbox bugs, collision issues with other bodies when trying to open a door, items falling through the floor when you kill things on non-continuous surfaces (like the wood slats on rope bridges), enemies being able to block attacks while they're attacking even when their shield is clearly not in a blocking position...I could probably add a few more, but those are the headliners), but just getting a good grasp of where the gameplay differs from Dark Souls and adapting to those changes made it a much more enjoyable experience.

It's sorta funny: people who come into Dark Souls 2 fresh, not having played previous games in the series, have a couple of advantages over veterans. We have to unlearn our Dark Souls habits where they don't apply to Dark Souls 2's mechanics, where newcomers don't have those old muscle memory reflexes to unlearn and overwrite.

Don't be discouraged! It's a game with a very, very rocky start and learning curve (I think starting a new game in DS2 is several magnitudes of difficulty higher than DS, particularly with regard to item upgrades given how hard it is to farm up materials other than basic titanite shards early in DS2, not to mention how deep into the game the Dull Ember is, compared with being able to rush to the Large Ember and farming large shards in the poison swamp in DS), but it does still have a lot to offer if you can put up with that harsh barrier to entry. n.n
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SinXAzgard21

Quote from: Nachtmahr on April 29, 2014, 02:10:16 PM
I was waiting to look into this thread until the game released on PC, to avoid any kind of spoilers and such obviously. I became a massive fan of Dark Souls the first about two months or so before the second one came out. When I heard there was a sequel on it's way I figured it would be the best time to give the original a chance, since it's just been sitting there on my Steam list for so very, very long. And it was great! Loved it a lot.

Then came Dark Souls 2 at last, and I was so incredibly hyped that I felt all but bored doing anything else, but I had to wait for the PC release, because I don't really have the money to throw at a playstation just for a single game, no matter how much I want to get my hands on it.

And then came the disappointment, and it genuinely breaks my heart to say this, but I feel like it's overall not a very good experience, compared to the original, or even on it's own.

The gameplay feels much, much slower, and the rolling and dodging plays a minor part now because all other animations take so long to finish that it's usually too late when you try to get out of the way. Even when you do get a roll off in time, the extreme tracking that enemies will do makes it far less effective to even attempt doing this, rather then just keeping up a shield, or simply backstepping. Apart from the tempo having been slowed to a crawl, there is the issue of bodies, at least in the PC version, living a life of their own as soon as you look away. I know, I know, the Havok engine Shenanigans were also very present in the first game, at times being rather silly, but now you can turn your back on a fresh kill, turn around again, and find him dangling from a wall that his head has apparently gotten stuck in, which really breaks the immersion for me.
That's not even the worst part though, as the difficulty of the game has been somewhat artificially inflated by stuffing unreasonable amounts of enemies into cramped spaces, making for tedious and rather unfair encounters with groups of enemies that will completely rush you. Taking a singly hit this time around is a massive deal of course, since your poise is just broken, leaving you open to countless attacks before getting a chance to react. And then there is the biggest, most heartbreaking issue in my book - The hitbox. The player hitbox is off by quite a bit, compared to how tight and precise it was in Dark Souls the first. Originally you would be able to do all sorts of hair-strand maneuvers, and still avoid taking hits. This time around attacks that are visible not making any kind of contact with hit you and do full damage.

I'm so sad right now, having really tried my best to give this game a fair chance, but with 8 hours played, and a fresh bundle of boss-souls lost because of hitbox issues and enemies doing 180* turns mid-swing.. I just can't bring myself to keep at it. :/

I've been playing on PC for over 10 hours and all my deaths have been my fault.  Enemies that turn 180 are usually standing still for a moment which means they are going to release a instant lunge attack, rolling is a huge part of this game it is just a matter of knowing how slow you are and if you can roll correctly which is normally forward right or forward left to get behind the boss.  In areas that are cramped their are ways to either lure them out one by one or go around some how.  No Mans Warf is  a good place to learn how to lure out enemies.
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Nachtmahr

Quote from: Shjade on April 29, 2014, 03:59:52 PM
For what it's worth, Nacht, when I first played the game I had pretty much the same reaction as what you're describing.

Rolling felt useless. I could never find the timing to avoid anything the way I could in Dark Souls, enemy tracking made it extremely hard to find the "safe" range to evade attacks entirely (after I gave up on trying to roll through the attacks themselves the way I would have in Dark Souls), none of the early shield options had good stability or 100% physical block for turtle strats, enemies seemed to swing faster and act more aggressively to exacerbate all the above issues - it felt terrible, even if I wasn't really dying from it. Eating a lot of lifegems still felt like I was doing something horribly wrong. Add to that my build decisions were ill-advised and I ended up at SL 100-something just getting absolutely stomped by the area I was in, barely scraping by from room to room.

Something like 20 hours in, I gave up on that character. Just scrapped that run entirely. Instead of continuing to push on with it, I turned it into a stat roller for a bit, using Soul Vessels to rearrange stats and try out some of the other equipment I hadn't used up to that point on that run, basically making it my character planner since there isn't one in website form yet. That helped me get a better handle on how much Adaptability/Agility made the game feel "right" again, or at least closer to it, what kind of weight load I could get away with using the gear I wanted, etc. Helped me unwind that frustration and start over with a clean slate.

New character: everything goes much, much better. Feels more like the Dark Souls I fell in love with. It still has its flaws (some of them glaring - hitbox bugs, collision issues with other bodies when trying to open a door, items falling through the floor when you kill things on non-continuous surfaces (like the wood slats on rope bridges), enemies being able to block attacks while they're attacking even when their shield is clearly not in a blocking position...I could probably add a few more, but those are the headliners), but just getting a good grasp of where the gameplay differs from Dark Souls and adapting to those changes made it a much more enjoyable experience.

It's sorta funny: people who come into Dark Souls 2 fresh, not having played previous games in the series, have a couple of advantages over veterans. We have to unlearn our Dark Souls habits where they don't apply to Dark Souls 2's mechanics, where newcomers don't have those old muscle memory reflexes to unlearn and overwrite.

Don't be discouraged! It's a game with a very, very rocky start and learning curve (I think starting a new game in DS2 is several magnitudes of difficulty higher than DS, particularly with regard to item upgrades given how hard it is to farm up materials other than basic titanite shards early in DS2, not to mention how deep into the game the Dull Ember is, compared with being able to rush to the Large Ember and farming large shards in the poison swamp in DS), but it does still have a lot to offer if you can put up with that harsh barrier to entry. n.n

I'm really glad to find someone who has had a similar experience, and can identify with the problems I feel the game has. I really want to love this game, and I want it to grow on me, but you're right in all respects - it's a harsh barrier of entry for someone who has played the old game, and no less within a month of picking up this game. I will take your word for it, and perhaps start over and hope that third time is the charm, because I want to let it grow on me. I want to have something more positive to say about this sequel than just 'It looks nice'.

In the meantime, I will continue to hope that From Software will at some point or another fix some of these issues. I'm not saying they should change the way the game changes, or make the way you 'level up' movement and such in this one (Apparently) but there are several issues, and many places in which the game feels either unintuitive or plain unfinished. I do believe that many of these issues can and should be fixed with patches, and I will give them some time still to deal with it all. But for the time being, my opinion remains not being very impressed.
~Await the Dawn With Her Kiss of Redemption, My Firebird!~
~You Were the Queen of the Souls of Man Before There Was the Word~

Shjade

The only real build advice I can give (aside from "have a goal and focus on reaching it," of course) is to get yourself to 100 agility, which is around 23 or so Adaptability. Once you hit that point, rolling starts to feel a lot more useful. Maybe still a tighter window than fast-rolling was in DS1, but the window for rolling through attacks at least feels a little more "right." Though, to be fair, that's after I've played enough to be more comfortable with DS2's attacks, but even with that familiarity I still get wrecked hard when I stay sub-95 agility for long.

At this point I tend to prioritize getting the stats I need to equip the weapon I want as #1, ADP to ~98 agility as #2, THEN start getting vigor and stamina and other things I want.
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