Dark Souls 3 Die Already

King of Posters
#243

Same here. I thought the ash was for leveling up bonfires like in DkS2, then I realized only the Firelink Shrine Bonfire has a “bonfire level” display. Seems a bit redundant, which has me wondering if anyone has found that strengthening your estus flask has any other effect on the game?

Reached the area after the catacombs, but found I couldn’t enter due to lack of a key item. Went exploring in an area I forgot, hopefully on the path to said item. It led me to a new area that’s very active for co-op. I had a pretty good time helping other players and learning about the area while I did it. The area’s layout is quite dense with lots of hidden bits and may be my favorite area at least in terms of structure. One bonfire, with progressive shortcuts back to it. I really like this, I prefer the bonfires-as-level-hub compared to them just being checkpoints on a journey.

2 Likes
#244

Yeah, it did seem weird. I wanted to say that it adjusts the level for which you interact with other players, but everything I’ve read says that only your weapon level + your character level affect matchmaking, and that’s all.

Am currently a bit stuck at a boss, mostly because I’m unsure of how to tackle the boss as melee. The boss was exceptionally difficult as a caster and I do not know how to beat this boss as melee. Even when I was a caster I needed help to beat the boss. Boss is Pontiff Sulvayhn I’ve been running with other players, trying to observe strategies, but near as I can tell the strategy is “get lucky and hope he doesn’t murder you”.

#245

I died to him four times in a row after barely knocking off a quarter of his health, then embered myself, noticed there were two NPC summons outside his door, and won the first try with their help. Only boss I’ve done that for. And this was just half an hour ago.

#246

onikiri & ubadachi is a good time

@felix this might be your weapon of choice if you liked blades of mercy in bb

#247

This… is exactly how it works in Dark Souls 2?

[quote]First, what is poise? Poise is an invisible bar that lets you not get staggered when you get hit by an attack. As long as you have more poise in your bar than the attack will damage your poise for (even 0.01 more), you will not be staggered, except in special cases that I will go over later. It does not matter how much more poise you have, as long as it’s more. When you are in an attack animation and your poise allows you to not get staggered, the attack will go through as if nothing happened. When you are standing still, or walking, or running, getting hit with enough poise will put you in a half stagger animation where movement speed is slightly reduced, but you are not prevented from performing any actions. Poise damage is exactly the same in both instances above. The only difference is the half stagger animation.
[/quote]

#248

finished it as well, it’s really excellent and enjoyed it greatly. It’s more self-referential that I’d like it to be, and the covenants are pretty basic i.e. no gravelording-alike, but really there are no big weaknesses I can think of.

PVP is gankcity / hide and seek but I enjoy it more than 2 already because it doesn’t happen in ugly boxes, call me shallow. Also too much of a controlled environment doesn’t do the fighting any favor imo, I’d like to see a middle ground but I guess I won’t

#249

Ah, alright. Guess I just wasn’t really aware about how poise changed! Hm.

I’m currently finding certain moves can’t be stopped at all once they get past a certain point regardless, particularly weapon skills. You can still be hit by things, but the animation and your hitbox still works (and hits enemies within it).

By the way Felix, what level were you when you fought that boss?

#250

High 50s I think.

#251

I’m sort of a trite person but I’m disparaging every instance of the “Praise the ________!” construction that I find.

3 Likes
#252

god damn i’m getting my ass handed to me by this game. the knights are brutal, and i don’t know what to do against the crazy monster dudes except run.

edit: alright i’m doing better now. i forgot how to dark soul.

#253

aldrich is an extremely good boss. that was fun. calling it there for the weekend as I’ve played a lot, I think that’s 2/4 lords down at right around the 20 hour mark. level 61 or something.

#254

Oh wow you like that area? That area felt miserable. I really miss the small soapstone. If you get summoned in that area and want a reward for being summoned you are devoting 30+minutes to helping the host get to the boss.

#255

this is definitely the contextless remix of the souls games. remarkably polished and consistently fair, nice callouts to earlier titles, great breadth of designs, but basically no reason for any of it to be there. and claiming that the going through the motions is the point is cheating. we have reached a point where there is as much justification for having to defeat four lords of cinder as with eight robot masters.

#256

less justification, because let’s be real here: we can’t just have robot masters running around. that shit is dangerous. lord of cinder? ehhh, could be good, who knows?

1 Like
#257

If anything, it’s more an indication that all the player is doing is replaying a video someone else already watched. At least from a lore perspective, that’s my general impression. Really though, that’s a fitting end for the series. Hopefully Miyazaki is going to move onto something fresh and pull From along with it.

#258

Demon’s Souls was an out-of-nowhere delightful surprise. Dark Souls was more hotly anticipated, but presented itself more slyly, and felt like a mythic mystery to be slowly, carefully picked at and unraveled. Since then, though, the higher demand and bigger, louder fanbase makes that mysterious quality harder to maintain. It’s fitting that Dark Souls 2 revealed itself to be fairly shallow upon scrutiny, and more focused on appeasing its bustling multiplayer community (which i actually consider a virtue of that game, even if it leads to many choices that aren’t to my taste).

If Dark Souls 3 is just a straightforward videogame-ass videogame, polished to a mirror sheen, then it does make a certain sense that its marginal qualities feel more threadbare. and it’s oddly fitting that it got that accidental early release, so it could be picked clean all the faster. (i can’t help but think it’s still too soon to declare some kind of final judgment on it, though hey i haven’t gotten to play it yet.)

Basically: if this is the Mega Man 6 of Souls, then that’s a fine place for the series to stop. because hey, MM6 is actually a pretty good game.

2 Likes
#259

they look like “lords of cinder” to you, Ashley

#260

in the end, these are still video games. they have to function as such. and right now no one does it better. have they become a little rote? sure – but that’s how video games work. people fetishize the series too much. you know how the games work. they only way to change that is to make a different game. which, you know, sure, that’d be cool too. but I’d rather play dark souls 2 than any non-from single player game released since.

#261

Given the shit ton of money Namco has put into advertising this thing, I doubt this will be where Souls stops. Also From themselves have never been ones to give up on a series as long as it was selling OK.

#262

Not forever, no, but From’s stated an explicit desire to wrap up the series as we know it w/ 3. wouldn’t be surprised if we got more Bloodborne-stye “let’s take this formula and tweak it like this” games, though.