To a limited extent I am treating VIG as this game’s ADP, absolutely necessary and thus a write off in the distribution of points in my build. I am level 100, getting runes just thrown at me every boss and dungeon, and my preferred stats are all where I want them to be at. I don’t feel at all like runes are rare enough to treat the small amount of levels I’ve put into VIG to be like a loss, I don’t know what else I would put them in otherwise really. Like, especially when you consider that you can only pump one stat so far before it starts to have diminishing returns and you really shouldn’t bother anymore.
I have like 22 VIG and 40 Dex 40 Strength and 26 Endurance. I’m rocking in this free world of runes no sweat.
part of my difference in experience might be because i play roguelikes where measuring survivability vs. damage output is integral for surviving beyond the early game, so i’m always interrogating the stat systems in games and adjusting on the fly.
i have 40 vigor in haligtree and i’m not having a huge problem with survivability. i’m curious parker – are you wearing any talisman that increases incoming damage? i think they’re good at low levels but i think they might fall off later when the incremental increase in stats doesn’t offset the damage increase
i actually slowed down leveling vigor b/c my flat healing (regen, heal spells) were being outpaced and i wanted to use the talisman that reduces damage taken at full health.
I don’t think I went for those talismans for very long because my str and vig were so high already I wasn’t seeing much benefit from leveling them so I didn’t see the point of further boosting them with talismans or runes so I tried going more for the get health or fp from killing enemies ones to try to band aid my mistakes working through dungeons. I think I’m just bad and was fatigued by then and the enemies at haligtree weren’t dying in 1-2 two hits so just jump attacking everything wasn’t cutting it anymore. it was really just the haligtree I had trouble on, the rest of the game was practically a muso game.
oh I did switch from “greatsword”, a colossal sword, to “iron greatsword,” a great sword. it did nearly as much damage upgraded but was much faster but I think it didn’t as consistently stagger enemies maybe, so that might have been my problem. it was much better at hitting rats and wolves though.
ok i’m starting to get deeper in haligtree and seeing enemies that are out of band, yeah. there’s a few that i don’t do a ton of damage to and i take a ton of damage from.
these are truly awful to hit with a big slow weapon, yeah
i’m currently running double great hammer, which has been a bit better than the halberd i was using at dealing w/ fast enemies. it does stagger most basic enemies in a hit or two which is also nice.
For some context on how underleveled I was: I started trying to do the Liturgical Town (which is right before Haligtree I gather?) at level 90. Even equipping muiltiple maxed out weapons has not been enough to get me up to where a lot of other players are at this point (the weapons you are holding apparently affect matchmaking)
They’re even awful to hit with a slowish weapon like my starting Club. And the birds/bats/harpies/backsteppers are awful to hit with a lowish-range weapon like my starting Club.
Quest Logs are great for parents who don’t want to think about this game the second they need/have to turn it off.
Like for a game this monstorously big you have to keep playing it because trying to restablish what I was doing and where I was going after a break I might as well not play it at all. So this is leading to me burning out because the Souls is very good. Though maybe I will end up quitting because I finally pushed past The Capital for about 15 minutes before a big earthquake and running into mooks I’ve fought dozens of times that now will kill me in two hits, and then another fucking gargoyle (I gave up on two dungeons because I just can’t RE: these gargoyles) and past that oh now the mooks are former dungeon bosses with health to match. So either waste my time more by going to go level because I’ve kind of cleared the whole map except you know whereever I haven’t who knows! The game is too fucking big.
Can’t see myself returning to this game I’ve invested 90 hours in, and just been dreaming about a managable DS2 replay the whole time. 9/10 one of the biggest games ever made.
not being able to pause is frankly already extremely disrespectful of parents’ time, of all the accessibility concessions that From gamely refuses to make, I think it’s time for them to let go of this one
I really can’t understand all this Vigor and armor discussion. But that’s probably because I’m always a pretty focused stats player and HP is always there to give me that comfort buffer.
Really happy FromSoft got the weight limit into the stamina stat. Missed thar since DS1 even though I kept using the black leather set cause fast roll is everything for me in that game. Still, stamina is always my second highest stat on my first runs, hp third.
Right now I have 40 vigor, rot armor set, and I’m pretty comfortable, some minor fuckups during Ranni’s questline but all good.
Btw I broke the game again.
Got my “Moonlight” and did a respec to put all that sweat Dex into Int…
Doing the Plateau and one hitting almost every enemy I find from my horse. Did the gaol with Godrick which seemed to have another name but it was still The Grafted, and I felt like I was bullying him… Even more than the first time when I was very overpowered with 2 +13 straight swords.
Feels like Demon’s Souls Moonlight … Feel powerful, and with ice to boot. Ridiculously funny.
I always saw the game as a coffee break love-child from both of companies having come together at some point or the other working with Tenchu…
But since FromSoft was already “the FromSoftware”… People were kinda expecting more “dept”?
DLCs, sequels, and everything like in Dark Souls.
But I really like the place Sekiro has to me, feels right as it is. Probably the game I did more runs…
About 20% of Steam players have already beaten the game, which is wild considering how huge it is. Previous From games have had shockingly high completion rates and I imagine this is gonna be similar.
The key inventory items between the pots and recipes pretty much function as a quest log. Pretty sure the item description for every key tells you where you can use it. If you find half of a tablet or whatever the item description tells you where the other half is.
No, there’s no quest log that tells you where to find the wandering monk, but there is lots of info that will remind you where you should go/what you should do when it comes to many of the key events in the game. NPCs even mark your map sometimes, or stick an extra one in the last tab of your inventory. Shit, the actual map is incredibly readable; after a point you should be able to tell exactly where you should be heading when you enter a new area. “That red spot’s a mine*, that’s probably the fort with the other half of the tablet, looks like that’s another great rune tower, etc.”
Like…there’s way more guidance in this game than previous From titles. Taking notes is still a good idea and getting a happy end with any of the NPCs is highly unlikely but I really think they did a better job of telling me what the heck I should be doing than any game since Demon’s Souls.
*I don’t think the first mine is marked on the map, which is a big fuckin issue, but maybe all the others are? Leaving it unmarked is an even bigger issue cuz most players would probably access it from the swamp to the south and if you go in there…shit gets wild.
Also if it’s the one where the description is helpful then the elevator can be bypassed entirely.
There’s one specific regions where towers are useless if you’re at a certain point in a certain quest but in the world at large you can do some stuff with them with some ingenuity. Once you solve one it’ll tend to work with the others.
As for underground-undeground areas, if that’s one where you can summon the horse then it can be done at much lower levels than you’d think (like, I did the one udner mistwood at level 20-30, only leaving the boss aside). As for tree guys, start with the one in the southern peninsula, I feel it was the easiest
I’m like 90 hours in (level 70 and trying to worm my way into volcano manor) and I finally started exploring some quests. Still loving it! I think I might be somewhat underleveled because a lot of bosses and phantoms one shot me but I should look into cheap protective miracles and see if they make things easier.
Still finding some big chunks of contents I missed the first time around in some places, it’s truly magical.
Finished the Sellen quest line but I had to look up the last few steps—easily one of the least discoverable in that you not only need to somehow know without prompting where to go but also know where several illusory walls and floors are. Which is a shame because it’s very cool and has an excellently gothic twist ending