Grandpa Gamin' thread 👴

[Grandpa]

Oh no, it’s cool! I appreciate the help you and everyone else has offered!

Coming to this game late as hell but having a good time with it. And sorta ruining every other open world game for myself in the process.

[Felix]

I played pyro and master key my first time and have a hard time picking any other option now

I like characters that have a lot of mediocre options lol. always used quelaag’s sword until pretty late too, nice and thematic

[Broco]

The problem with replaying DkS1 with full knowledge of where everything is is that you skip or trivialize the best part of the game which is the first half.

There’s no way to really get back the first playthrough experience but I found it refreshing when I replayed it positing a restriction that I was not only going to refrain from Master Key (since actually many bosses are also skippable without it), but also never step away from the “naive” sequence until I rang the two bells, i.e. traverse Burg, Parish, beat Gargoyles, visit only the first part of Darkroot (no Basin or post-door), return to Firelink, Lower Undead Burg, Depths, Blighttown, and beat Quelaag before leaving Blighttown.

It’s still a fairly easy romp just applying all the basic combat/build/pathing knowledge that you cannot help but make use of, but I got to remember how well-designed these areas are and the sense of odyssey in this quest that goes up into the heights, then down into the depths.

[Grandpa]

Fast learning that, once again, my greatest enemy in Dark Souls is never the terrifying looking butcher with the giant cleavers or haunted water ghosts or whatever the fuck I ran into and immediately died to in that tunnel in the Valley of Drakes, but a simple posse of incredibly angry, nude, red men.

They menaced me before when I would make my run to the gargoyles, but now someone gave them a torch, and more than rabid dog lunges and giant dual club sword swings, I’m terrified of this lanky little bastard wiggling that stick at me.

[Grandpa]

I don’t know what happened. As best I can figure, I chugged some Coke (regular), and had two and a half beautiful runs in Dark Souls.

I didn’t accomplish much, but I somehow flawlessly pulled off backstabs and parries like I never had before.

Then, when retrieving 4000 souls was on the line, I choked and fucked up.

I don’t think it was the Coke, but somehow I need to regain that careful focus. It felt like everything was clicking for just a moment

[LaurelSoup]

I’m up to Sen’s in my Switch play through. I ought to get back to that. Not sure if there’s any tricks to ease jolly collaboration in that version but I’d be down.

[Grandpa]

I cheesed the Titanite Demon. I’m not proud, but it’s done. The one by the blacksmith is gone.

Almost got a working strategy against the butcher going, so, making some slow progress.

My parry epiphany never really came back, but the ol’ block-stagger-poke still works for the most part.

[slime]

the strat for titanite demons is to hug their left armpit and roll into it

or hug their left butt while circle strafing

saying this because There Are So Many

[Grandpa]

I beat the butchers in The Depths, but not how I hoped to.

I got the first one and, OK, cool, fine, I got it. Took a dozen tries, and it was sloppy, but I did it.

I could see some dogs and hollows in the sludge, so I figured I would roll around, break some boxes, and…I fell. Right above the biggest fucking rat I’ve ever seen.

That thing died in two hits, thankfully, but this maze of tunnels down here is terrifying. I managed to find a bonfire down there (after which I met the second butcher, and barely survived), met a pyromancer and limped my way back to Firelink Shrine.

God this is gonna scare the shit out of me, all these claustrophobic tunnels and slimes ambushing from the ceiling. One of those chanting dudes was standing at the doorway of one of the sewer rooms, just…chilling, too tall to chase after me.

Terrifying.

[Grandpa]

I’m gonna eat these words soon enough, but these sewers ain’t that bad.

Lotta pitfalls, lotta poison frogs, but…seems alright, once you’re good and in the muck.

Getting the lil’ hot hand from the pyromancer guy who was chilling out in a barrel has been very helpful, too. I gotta be mindful not to exhaust my charges, but it’s already helped more than a few times. Glad I burned some souls upgrading it.

[slime]

did you grab the large ember from the butcher’s chest?

[Grandpa]

I think so? I hope so. I got something, at least.

Edit: oh my god, this Evil Eye Ring is a game changer.

[Grandpa]

So, uh, is this Large Ember only good for one use, or can my buddy here smith multiple things with it?

Don’t wanna buff this longsword and regret it if I get something better down the line.

[Broco]

Multiple uses, really it’s a permanent unlock of the next tier of blacksmithing. You can upgrade any weapon to +10/Raw +5 from now on provided you have enough Large shards (rare at this point, commonplace eventually)

[Grandpa]

Oh nice. Guess I need to decide now if I wanna swap it over to raw or not (best I can tell looking at these stats, raw nerfs the poke, which I use quite a bit).

Wait that might not be it at all. Thrust is the type of weapon. God these stats are hard to read, haha.

[slime]

normal +15 is almost universally the best weapon type unless you have faith or int. for str and dex, phys is the biz

adding elemental buffs to your weapon is for dealing with specific enemies or stat builds. like divine permanently kills skeletons so they don’t resurrect, fire is useless against most Lethal Lava Land enemies, lightning against heavy armored enemies, magic/enchanted if you have high int, divine/occult for high faith

raw just removes stats scaling so like, it’ll do flat damage regardless of scaling, which can be helpful in the super duper early game, but you’re past that.

you now have access to enemies and locations that drop large shards so maybe stick to regular

[Grandpa]

I keep forgetting that it takes a while for souls to “pop” after you kill a boss, so I was about to be pissed that I killed such an ugly thing for just a key.

Beat it on my second try, though? Wasn’t too hard, though I was sweating it a little when I got a little too zealous butt-slashing and it decided to do a flying backflip buttstomp.

Also outrunning an unfathomably huge pile of vomit has gotta be a game highlight so far.

Now…now to figure out how to get past this big poisonous bastard with a club, on a narrow rickety platform. Thanks, Miyazaki.

[Grandpa]

Oh…this place does kinda suck, doesn’t it.

[Tegiminis]

Extra spoilered tip to add to this that you probably know (but is useful for others): leeches in blighttown drop 5 green shards, and frampt converts green → normal at a rate of 1:5, so you can stockpile small shards for mass upgrading by hunting said leeches

[Grandpa]

Made it to the bonfire in Blighttown. These even nastier, nuder hollows are manageable, as are those big dudes that gave me trouble earlier.

Decided I didn’t even wanna bother with whatever the hell that was hanging off the wall, and just sniped it down.

Speaking of down - gotta figure out a way to get further down this place.

Also gotta venture back up and try to leap to this corpse I saw on a ledge (there’s a message near the bonfire about trying to jump to the ledges on there huge columns, but after trying and failing about six times, I think it’s someone fucking around. Or I haven’t found the right angle…).

Glad my “gotta find a way to get that thing” sense drove me to circle back and down in the Depths to find the Spider Shield. It’s come in handy down here, where everything sucks and is poisonous (unless it looks like a little roast duck, and then it’s a dog that belches fire and usually jumps to its death).