Yes.

Only issue is lag, which killed me last night against a blade of the darkmoon (your god died like a [censored] damnint). But aside from that MP is fine, it lacks people playing anything other than WoW, sun bros, DB and DW though.

Gwyn boss fight. I am having flashbacks, and my parrying svcks.

*enter fight*
*die 90% of the time or get 1 parry*
*die if not alredy dead*

Damnit Soliare where are you, I saved your ass, killing many npcs to do so.
1 riposte takes of arround 1/5th of qhys life iirc.

I know a way how to fight with someone specific, but it takes time. All the host needs to do is to drop his own white sign and remove it instantly-this refreshes all signs and may eventually show your sign to him. The problem comes when he becomes invaded, he can no longer refresh. Same for the player who put down a red sign, he may refresh his world for the host instead, but if he becomes invaded, his sign disappears all together. I tried for half an hour summoning my friend for PvP in the painting world, but we were both invaded so mch and all the time that we gave up.

Tanking didn't seem to work to well for you last time, but.. I tanked the hell out of Gwyn, too. He went down in about a minute with me only having to heal twice. If you get very close to him, the bastard is so tall that many of his attacks seem to miss you and do very little damage if they connect.

And about the online: everything works perfectly for me. Very rarely will a summoning/invasion fail and I rarely experience lag -- the few times I do, it's usually manageable. I don't even have to wait around for much online play. I can put a red or white sign down practically anywhere and not have to wait more than a minute or two, and invading is even faster (and protecting the garden in the forest covenant is damn near instantaneous at the right time of day).

Mybe tht ws pre patch, because iron flesh has since been nerfed, drasticly.

It dosent matter now, beat gwyn. Soliare showed after I killed the centipede demon trying to trigger his appearance.
Soliare tanked Gwyn while I used zweihander.

Then I played through again, and after around 2 hours I got my last achivement (knights honour). Never have to worry about NG+ again.

Hey, you guys have any advice for fighting the Bell Gargoyles for a newbie?

I've tried three times, last time I had Solaire with me, and got the closest i've been to winning.

Nope. I've never played pre-patch. I only got the game a few weeks ago and it was immediately patched to the latest version (1.05, I think?). Hell, I'd have liked to see how powerful it was before now then because it still works really well for me.
Focus on the first and attack it relentlessly because the second one is on a timer and once he shows up the fight obviously gets quite a bit more difficult. When dealing with one gargoyle on its own, try to be quick and keep to its sides/back, rolling away when necessary to avoid one of its attacks. Main thing with a lot of bosses is to not let too much distance get between you and the boss. It seems that most of them are total [censored]es when you get away from them and are relatively easy up close. Also, if you've got any gold pine resin, try putting that on your weapon to help get the first gargoyle out of the way quickly.

Ugh, tried it with solaire and gold pine resin..got so close!

Now i'm down to two resin, maybe I should spend some time just getting good at the fight before using any more resin or humanity lol..at least I got a Gargoyle tail axe out of it.

You can go to the forest area before trying to kill the gargoyles. You'll get some souls from killing it, allowing you to level up health a bit. It might also be a good plan to go to the new londo ruins and search for a fire keepers soul trasure there and upgrade your estus flask to +2. (it's most likely +1 now, if you took the other fire keepers soul inside the church where the gargoyles boss room is and then talked to the female under the firelink shrine, in a cell.)

Yeah I have the +1 estus from upgrading it with her the first time..how do I get to new londo, and by the forest do you mean the Darkroot basin and such that I reach through the basemant?

Anyway I keep trying, if it were not for the flames from the 2nd gargoyle I think i'd have it now..but yeah maybe a good idea to go exploring a bit.

Edit..ah wait New Londo is the place with the Ghosts..I don't think I can kill them yet.

The forest can be reach by going from the fire link shrine, up the elevator to the church, past the church to a place with a blacksmith. The forest is just outside that place.
As for new londo ruins, it's under the firelink shrine. If you are looking at the NPC sitting next to the firelink bonfire, look where he is looking and to your right. There's stairs leading down. That's new londo ruins eventually. (just past the female who upgrades your estus flasks). Only a few levels under your belt and a better estus flask will turn your struggle to victory.
*note* when you go to new londo ruins, don't bother attacking the ghosts there. You can only harm them if you are cursed (by the real curse or a temporary curse from a rare consumable). Just run past them and look for the fire keepers soul. It's in the very beginning once you've started to encounter ghosts. Prepare to die there, so don't bother going as a human form with 1000000 souls in there, whatever you have on you at the time of going there, consider it a sacrifice for a better estus flask.

Awesome, I got my plan now!

Thanks for the advice man..one other thing, is there some secret to avoiding the bell garg's fire attacks? At one point I thought victory was almost certain then they both started flaming nonstop and it ended quickly.

I've never had a problem with the gargoyles. I've never-not once, died to them.

Just roll out of range of the fire when you see it's starting and run at them when it ends and walk behind them. That *should* work.

Ok thanks, I'm still so new to the game and combat that alot of stuff that seems trivial is still difficult for me..at first at least.

Like I just barely am a the point wehre I can sometimes competently parry + riposte.

Get the drke sword. Shold tie you over until Sens fortress.

Im taking a break from DS for while, but I think I might look for the best halbard. Zwiehander with sunight blade worked very well. But it was a bit slow, a halbard could fix that me thinks. Might be less powerful though :/

Also does mircle damge increase with faith ? I started using sunlight blade at 30 faith. But then after 41 faith it didnt change much...
Have 2 charater plans in my head. Sahme one would dominate pvp if lag didnt ruin it for me.

I got the drake sword..however unfortunately I think I have gimped my guy, I put all these points into dex, no strength, started as a wanderer..so he is too weak to wield alot of the weapons i'm finding one handed.
I just upgraded a scimatar a bunch...it seems to hit hard enough but meh I feel like I missed the boat.

Think I should start over?

If your not too far sure. My first character was a thiief. I had high dex... Didnt go well.
The choice is somewhat pointless imo, your forced to play a certain way. I think knight would be good starting class, pyromancy has no requirements, just upgrade the flme and it gets better. Then get Havels ring, it boosts equip load, it takes a ring slot, but the armoured knight is as fast as a guy in robes, if its not too heavy for you.

I don't think so. Going Dex is just as viable as going Str. Just bump Str up to the minimum requirement for the weapon you'd like to wield, but keep pumping Dex up until forty.

Why ? I found dex useless. Aside from some weapon requirements, but strength was always higher.

The build with the highest DPS (damage per second) is a dex build with 11 strength, 40 dex and 50 faith using the darkmoon blade miralce (buff). A dex build using spears and a shield also hits very hard with high dex, combined with a buff. It's solid, keeps you protected against all enemies in the game and hits hard.

What weapons would be used ?

I think it wouldnt stand up to a guy with 50 strength, 18 dex (I think its that) with the drgon greatsword. Use a parrying dagger, 2 hand the weapon, then wtch as you charcter blugeons the enemy THREE times. I had 39 str and did around 2000 damage in the parry adding all 3 attacks. The last one alone did 1100 iirc. Granted all enemies cant be parried, but upgrade your sword nd the thing does around 500 damage. Now if you had power within and a high vit, maybe some points in endurance to wear a decent set of armour, your going to be a killing machine.

A normal falchion should suffice to get a high DPS with a dex build.

But you can't really count backstabs and parries to how stong a weapon is. A slow weapon is just as fast as any weapon when doing a backstab or parry. Thus eliminating their weakness of being slow.

High dps or not, you wont be doing much damage if they have a spear or halbard. Falchions have too short of a range, and your weapons are very limited with such strength.

They're not limited at all by strength. Dex scaling weapons are just as viable as Str scaling weapons. If you can't get past a spear with a short range weapon then that's simply a lack of player skill.

Slow weapons suffer from another problem. You see your opponent start an attack-plenty of time to dodge, unless you are in mid-attack yourself. A big weapon also has a difficult time against spears. Not to mention that a dex build using a buffed up spear will be lethal, fast, have range advantage and also shield block advantage. My first character in dark souls was a shield + spear using cleric, turling behind a shield in perhaps the best tactic in PvE and in PvP it forces opponents to play in a different way.

I mean, weapon choice is limited.

Yes its all down to skill in the end, but its going to be easier for me to beat someone with a falchion, when I have a halbard.