Yeah, the openness of it kind of bugged me at first - but it seems way easier to skip entire sections of the game (esepcially a place like Huntsman Copse...jeez).

Of course.


It's weird, many people were bitching that DkS2 wasn't as open as the first one and you were confined to a major path at the beginning. Quite silly, to be honest.


What's wrong with Huntsman? Not that you can skip it anyway, you need to cross it to reach the Iron Keep. And even if you use the Shrine of Winter skip trick,

Well... found the 3rd DLC's optional boss. And.... I don't think I'm going to solo that one. Fuck that shit.

The run to the boss is such a slog too.

Also:


On the plus side, (spoilers for all the DLCs!)

I JUST READ ABOUT THE THING HE GIVES YOU. I gotta get the DLC - I feel like I'll just end up keeping my same character for awhile though - I like the dex based...maybe try to go through NG+ before taking anything else on, and then making a strength/pyromancy character.

I hear the effect goes away in the next playthrough. Boooooo. It'd make the last boss trivial though (completely nullifying the curses), at least, if she weren't already dead on almost all my toons.

The DLC in NG+ is insane, especially the bosses. Keep in mind you can access the DLC areas after beating the last boss of the game, so long as you didn't trigger the Journey 2 at the Majula bonfire, so there's no reason to go to NG+ if you just want to visit the new areas.

Sir Alonne in NG+ is giving my dex nightmares. I might have to respec. He's just insanely fast, and on NG+ he hits like a truck so one missed roll (and it's easy to miss a roll, he's stupidly fast and crosses the entire room in a split second) is death. There are almost never any openings to heal either, he punishes Estus like crazy. He was actually harder than Fume Knight for me in NG+. I might respec to use a greatshield and use the bird ring to tank him. I tried that with my str build (NG, though) and it worked like a charm. Using the Old Knight Shield, which has high bleed resist, allowed me to tank all his hits and combos and do only safe pokes with my red iron twinblade (which is amazing, by the way), one by one to whittle him down.

I beat him without a shield in NG with my dual whip users, but NG+, just... ouch.

They're all out now right? Was there a season pass still or anything?

Not for PS3 (NA) and Xbox 360. There's a season pass for PS3 EU and PC.

Woohoo, beat the kittens all by my lonely self, with my strength build. With a brightbug active + charcoal resin + red iron twinblade + 50 str, I managed to have a high enough DPS to take out the first one before the second one came down, though just barely, and I had to trade hits and risk a combo but I really didn't want to have to handle two kittens at once. Second kitten didn't even have time to buff (he tried, but his health was so low I managed to finish him off before he could heal some).

At first I thought this was completely useless since you would be doing the DLC at the end and it won't help your main game at all.

But then I found out the best use for this. You can non-stop PvP until the cows come home. Just summon and fight as long as you're wearing a crown. This would probably be the best way to have organized PvP events or tournaments.

After PvPing, I found my dex is superior to my faith now. With all the patches and nerfs and what not, my dex can handle herself in fights much better.

It's also useful against Nashandra if you haven't beaten her, at least. Curse immunity.

Piss easy final boss either way.

That's like draining the poison pool from that one bosses chamber. Now the final boss is a complete joke.

ONLY BOSSES LEFT ARE GIANT LORD/THRONE DUDES AND NASHANDRA.

But, decided to upgrade lots of weapons instead of "beating" the game. NG+ kind of scares me.

You're not thrown into NG+ right after killing Nashandra, Froggo. You'll be allowed to rummage around until you want to start a second journey, which is pretty nice.

Oh...ye? Maybe I'll do that for a bit. Pop her off - consider the DLC...I have more or less a quality build right now, and I'm not much for sorcery, but may start buffing the pyromancy flame....

Since Santier's Spear got nerfed, you would think it's a bad weapon now. But Flynn's ring from the Crown of the Sunken King DLC makes it good again.

So this build can be called the Flynn Blade build

Flynn's ring will give a +50 AR if your vitality is 9 with the Third Dragon ring. Your vitality can't go any higher or else you'll start to lose that bonus.

This adds to the Ring of Blades.

With Ring of Blades +1 and Flynn's Ring, a fully maxed out Raw Santier's Spear is going to be 385 + 85

Since your vitality is low you can't equip super heavy stuff but you can have decent armor. Your secondary weapons should be rapiers as the bonus now makes rapiers hit pretty hard.

Ice Rapier (fairly common drop in Crown of the Ivory King DLC) is 220 + 85 with RoB +1 and Flynn.

A maxed out Espada Ropera is also good to have. I have one in my left hand and alternating pokes between that and the Ice Rapier creates a nice stunlock from hell. The Espada also parries so it's nice in your left hand for that reason.

I've tested some of the better daggers and they also do decent damage. In some cases you're even doubling the dagger's attack. Much better than relying on the stat scaling with the daggers. Daggers are also light, which helps with having low vitality, but I prefer the moveset and reach of the rapiers.


Since you're not relying on your stats as a damage modifier you can stack a lot on vigor. Don't go past 50. You also have a lot of wiggle room for whatever other stats you want.


This is the build to have if you want Santier's Spear to be awesome again. It's really enjoyable to do high damaging pokes with the Ice Rapier and Santier's Spear, as well as use Santier's twinblade moves for high damage.

This build's strength seems to be high chip damage and combo damage. Unlike my strength build or my hex which just does high damaging attacks, you're doing quick safe attacks that deal more damage than they normally would. When you have time unleash Santier's twinblade attacks.

I do miss my mundane build, but this is a really nice substitute that does much of the same thing with less magic.

testdlc4, eh?

I'd be OK with a 4th DLC, heh. As another poster said in that thread, it'd make the buffed crowns more useful than just PvP.

so, I downloaded the DLC and the only thing I have left to do is fight Nashandra! I'm currently at 138 and will cap off at 150 and should end somewhere around 3 million souls - which seems to be good for PvPing.

Current setup is 40 str/dex - use the falchion/Warped Sword/Sunlight Sword mostly, but also considering getting the Sentry's spiked club...hmm hmm. Any other quality build weapons y'all recommend? I just love the sunlight sword's move set, so quick and fun to play with. Plus, I like the fact that it just looks like a regular ol' sword, nothing flashy. Also rocking Alva's armor and want more fashion souls stuff, but I fear I'm not well versed enough in DkSII's pvp yet to do so! I decided to join the Brotherhood of Blood because it seems hella easier to have successful invasion with it. Been fighting at the King's Gate in the castle. Was thinking of doing the Blue Sentinals or maybe even the Rat King stuff.. Any recommendations on what's fun to do? Any other well known PvP spots?

Picked up this game again the other day and started trying out the second dlc. Was doing fine until a room where there was a trap door in the floor and would fall in and I would have to fight like 5 or 6 high powered enemies at once and get flattened. Tried it a few times to no avail. Got tired of the ganking and started playing the Shadow of Mordor game. I really want to play DS1 but fucking GFWL is registered to a fake email account from when i was trying to fix it a long time ago so I can't remember my password and can't play again. As much as DS2 pisses me off in its design I keep coming back to it so I will likely give it another shot soon.

Rat Covenant is awesome, Froggo. You should join us in all of our assholish glory.

Good news, Dark Souls 1 is gonna migrate to Steam completely next month.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10 ... -to-steam/

Thanks for that Morrigan!

I'm a little confused though about that article. If we have the game in our steam library then we don't need to worry about that GFWL marketplace code? It just migrates over normally without any extra work on the players part?

I'm not sure. I think it's indeed for those poor souls who bought it on GFWL, and you definitely won't have to redeem the game again, but I'm not sure about save transfers. :S

Well it's about damn time, that's for sure. I appreciate From Software even making a PC port, but they should have done a bit more research into it beforehand. The second game is a good example of how good of a port the first could have been with a little bit of patience. Anyway, it's just good this happened though I'm not sure if I'm ever going to play Dark Souls again.

Especially considering it only took about a day for an unofficial patch was released from a fan to correct many of the problems.

DS2 is still not a great port but it is sufficient. I heard that keyboard binding is a pain and there are delay problems with it, and even without an xbox controller the button prompts are still for an xbox. This is pretty poor in my book but I use a xbox controller so doesn't affect me. I also get frustrated when games are ported to PC and feel like they are still designed for last generation consoles instead of being tweaked to make use of the PCs superior performance, but this is how most games are as I imagine it would just be too expensive otherwise. With the new consoles out now games should have caught up a bit to the PC though.

Anyways DS2 got game of the year the other day from the Golden Joystick Awards. I like the game but I don't feel it is worthy of a GOTY title, and I am aware it was a fan-voted award. I haven't played many other games from this year though to compare to.

That part really hurt my hex build which is a glass cannon. She's fine picking off enemies one by one with Great Resonant Soul. But in that area, I couldn't do a thing. I eventually ran to open the door and then from the doorway took them all out one by one. The mages in that DLC have super high dark defense to the point I'd rather face off against any of those giant iron warriors than them any day.

It's like all 3 DLCs were purposely designed to make it harder for hexers to compensate for them being so powerful in the regular game.

The secret boss of that area, gave me a lot of trouble too. I had to summon an NPC for help, since there were no available humans and just go mad with hexes and replenish my spells with amber herbs as soon as he took the pressure off me and focused on them.

Decided to do this and have been enjoying it immensely. Post-Nashandra world is so fun and weird - it's almost like there's no pressure to live or die.

Decided to go with the Llewellyn armor with some slight variations...LOVE IT. My pink haired fearsome sword-woman looks sweeeet.

Welcome to the Rat Bastard Club, Frog

Glad you're enjoying the ride. It's cruel, I know, but the Rat Covenant is just too much fun to pass up. Setting up traps, devising quick strategies, making use of the enemies in the area..... It's awesome.

Yeah, it reminds me of how the 120 lvl'rs played in the first one - lots of dodging and clever play, and plus, I can use my poison spear and poison pyros and have it be more cosplay orientated - really love the way it's set up. Always seems fairly busy too - which is sweet. Plus, serving the "Rat King" just seems pretty fun. Chaotic but isolated, fighting for the sake of fighting.

I enjoyed playing through as a craven acolyte of a small, smelly, and ever-so furry Rat King. I personally found the fight against the Royal Rat Authority as being reminiscent of the encounter with Sif, the Great Grey Wolf. However, the worst part to that boss fight is taking care of the rat minions who will inflict poison damage against you. Unfortunately, the Rat King covenant doesn't hold up to the Gravelord Servants from Dark Souls, despite being slightly influenced by the latter. I loved "infecting" nearby worlds with the black phantom NPC mobs, who would appear out of nowhere to inflict substantial damage onto the host. I also appreciate how there is an unlimited stock of corrosive urns sold by the Rat King, which makes my time invading as a notorious invader NPC from the Old Iron King DLC much more enjoyable.

On the other hand, the Brotherhood of Blood is absolutely frustrating, especially if you're trying to make any significant progress within the covenant's ranks. I would recommend staying on the regular New Game cycle if you want to avoid the "tryhard" and otherwise vexing character setups out there. In the regular New Game cycle, the Brotherhood of Blood arena matches are much less irritating than their New Game Plus counterparts. Trying to offer Undead blood for Nahr Alma is certainly a test in patience.

I bought Dark Souls II for PC during a Namco-Bandai sale and already made two new characters with more on the way. They're mostly gonna be nerdy cosplays, since on PC you see the character's name instead of the player's Steam ID. I'll post pics soon.

Seems like my PC isn't that good though. Tried downsampling with Gedosato and my framerate drops at PS3-like levels when in 3200x1800. Ouch. Even at 1080p with Gedosato's post-processing effects the framerate seems to drop a wee bit, maybe 50 instead of the full 60 at vanilla. It's still fairly smooth, so I'm gonna test it for a while. Had to tweak the bloom though, it was way too high, ugh.

Have to say, Frigid Outskirts was probably the hardest area of the game. The blinding blizzard mixed with the constant onslaught of those reindeer bastards made it HELL. I spent two hours trucking through a whiteout until I stumbled upon a cliff and the path to Lud and Zallen, who weren't horribly difficult. I only have the Ivory King left and I've cleared all the bosses in Dark Souls II.

Lud & Zallen is probably the hardest boss in the game for me... I still haven't beaten him with my Champion. Not sure if I want to even try...

Frigid Outskirts is more annoying than hard. You gotta run straight towards the shelters and lure the horses/reindeers (whatever the fuck they are) there to fight them, fighting them in the open blizzard is suicide because more will spawn.

The Frigid Outskirts isn't too frustrating if you move towards the left-most wall and follow that down until you reach the cliff right before the boss' fog gate. I've followed that route with multiple characters so far, and have experienced very little issues doing so.

My strategy for fighting Lud and Zallen is to cast Denial right before the encounter, and utilize quick weapons that have a decent counter-damage bonus, such as the Uchigatana. Additionally I've found that fighting these two bosses unlocked helps tremendously in effectively dodging through their attacks, as they both share similar (if not the same) attacks as Aava, the King's Pet. Otherwise, I will agree with you that this boss encounter is slightly challenging. However, I doubt any boss encounter in Dark Souls 2 is (or will be) as difficult as my first encounter with the Fume Knight. At least the reward(s) for defeating Lud and Zallen are slightly worth taking the time to earn.

On the other hand, one encounter that I have yet to defeat is Maldron the Assassin. He's a great addition to the game, however, he's very much a scum-bag.

Totally agree. Nashandra was a simple fight. I generally had much more trouble with the optional bosses and the DLC bosses, which is odd. Darklurker, Fume Knight, and Ancient Dragon were hard as hell, but The Last Sinner and Throne Beavis and Throne Butthead were easy to beat, for example.

Last Sinner pre-patch wasn't a pushover, dammit. I feel sorry for those who missed out on her Artorias Jr-like intensity. Now she's all slow and weak. Why you do this From

When did that patch come up? I beat her September 6, so I'm wondering now whether I got the hard or easy version.

She got nerfed like within a month of release, some time in April IIRC.

I really liked that boss fight - couldn't imagine how hard it would be if they kept her really hard and the original hella dark lighting was in effect...I bet that would've been crazy!

So, decided to continue NG+ with my first character after a long time without playing DSII.

Promptly put the game down after a dozen encounters with the red phantom at the entrance of Drangleic Castle.

Fuck. That. GUY!