[alicia hillier]

Dark Souls Discussion
Thread #20

For all discussions about Dark Souls lore and gameplay.
Dark Souls 2 and Demon Souls are also welcome topics, of course, as they are all part of the Soul series.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1454775-dark-souls-discussion-thread-19/

Latest news on DS2: http://ca.ign.com/videos/2013/04/10/dark-souls-2-gameplay-reveal-12-minute-demo reveals some great looking gameplay!
Also, a http://ca.ign.com/videos/2013/04/10/everything-you-want-to-know-about-dark-souls-2 about the demo from IGN.

[Victoria Vasileva]

Anyone else notice that Lightning weapons seem just as effective as Divine weapons against undead?

[Blessed DIVA]

Lightning weapons have a large base damage, which is why they are useful against pretty much everything. The beautiful thing about divine weapons though, is that the undead won't come back alive when you've killed them. This is not the case with lightning weapons.

[Genevieve]

Also should be mentioned that Divine weapons scale with Faith, so if you have low Faith then you don't get the most damage out of them.

Too bad lightning weapons make that terrible noise when you hit something. I never use them because of that.

[Victoria Bartel]

Is there much of a point in using magical, elemental, or divine/occult weapons if you have no points added to faith or intelligence? do lightning and fire based upgrades rely on stats for the boost received?

i've only added points to vit (17), end (18), str (36) and dex (20) at this point everything else is at default starting point for a warrior.

I have around 40 green titanite from farming the giant leeches in blighttown swamp for large titanite shards. but given the finality of anything you try out in the game, I don't want to waste a ton of souls and titanite on weapons I won't be able to really take advantage of just to see how they turn out.

I built a longsword +10 yesterday and used it for farming, it's better than the drake sword for sure, but it's not as big a leap forward as i'd hoped.

[Czar Kahchi]

With your stats you want to be rocking a strength weapon, like a black knight greataxe, large club, manserpent greatsword, demon great machete, claymore, something like that. With 36 strength there's no point wasting souls on faith or int for your melee weapons. I am a fan of the large club. It does massive damage with its A scaling in strength, inflicts poison, and can be buffed. Lightning/fire/chaos weapons do not rely on any stats for their damage, with the partial exception of chaos weapons, which scale with humanity and do their max damage at 10 humanity.

[Eilidh Brian]

Guess what? i played me some Dark Souls today... i did. What the hell is up with me and Kalameet... he just won't give me a break. I want to kill him sooo bad but first i must get his freaking tail... and he just won't give it up. I think i tried ten times before i gave up again and let him have his tail... for now. After that i went on a killing spree... killed all Fire Keepers, Blacksmiths and started to farm 17 Dragon Scales that i came short to get the Dragon Torso Stone. I got in to a farming mode and thought "might as well get 10 Souvenir of Reprisal while i'm at it" for my "get all miracles in NG+ run" plan. Also did some soul farming in the Painted World cause i want to try some spell stuff out. Intell up to 32. Crystal all the way. Still not played Demons Souls... not in the mood yet and i want to finish my first Dark Souls run before starting with that.

[Rebecca Dosch]

Best crafting system of all time?

[Mylizards Dot com]

It might be worth making one divine weapon just to make the Catacombs a little easier. Unless the Skeletons are killed with a Divine weapon, they'll keep on rising until their associated Necromancer is killed. But other than that, no. There's no point using or making weapons that scale for stats you don't intend on increasing.

As for the longsword, that gets better with higher Strength and Dexterity, but the scaling for both is always going to be average.

[Claudia Cook]

Woooooo! Gear upgrading time just before going to, from what I guess, Sen's Fortress. No idea what gear is hot and what is not, but upgrading anything light armor, as my endurance is terrible.

[Bryanna Vacchiano]

Weapon Upgrades:
Upgrading weapons basically all comes down to two things....

1: Do you like the way the weapon feels, and how it moves?
If you like it, use it. Simple as that.

2: Do you have the correct stats?
Only use a Dex weapon if you have Dex. Only use Int if you have Int. etc, etc.
If your Stats are all over the place, use a Quality Weapon.
(a Quality Weapon is one that has Stat bonuses in more than one Stat, usually Str and Dex)

Don't stress about which to choose.... Fire, or Lightning, or Normal.... Most weapons are usually so relative to each other when maxed out that it doesn't make much difference except what you prefer to use when measured along side your Stats.
(I will always pick a +15 Uchigatana to a +5 Lightning Uchigatana .... because a standard +15 has superior Stat bonuses)

Some weapons have caveats though.
Crystal is fragile. Divine and Occult require Faith to be powerful. Chaos is best when you always have 10 soft Humanity. Raw is garbage, ignore it.
But Divine is handy in the Catacombs and for Nito, so it is handy to have one you can pull out.


Armor Upgrades:
Just wear what ever you want, based on how fast you want to move.
And maybe some secondary gear for certain Resistances. (like Poison, Fire, Magic, etc)
That's it.

A full set of upgraded Knight Armor obviously gives more protection than a fully upgraded Shadow Set.... but the factor is maneuverability.
Wear what gives you the roll speed you want.
Everything else is basically just aesthetics, and how you want to play.... a Tank or a Fast Roller.

[Rinceoir]

Aww Raw is garbage? That svcks.

Made a new character yesterday (based off The Woodcutter's Wife book from Skyrim actually lol) and upgraded a great axe to Raw+5 last night. One good thing I did notice is that the stat scaling didn't take a hit like it usually does with weapons. Gonna get that very large Ember though and was planning on giving it 15 Normal anyways.

[brenden casey]

Yeah, Raw isn't all that. But hey, look on the bright side... at least you've got an achievement out of it, right? => +5

[Red Sauce]

I thought raw weapons were really good for low levels. Never used em though. They should inflict poison though like in Demons Souls iirc.

[Ross Thomas]

Kinda disappointing how much can be considered useless then.

But yeah, at least I also didn't have to use a slab to get it to 5 lol.

[Beulah Bell]

So which ending did you guys choose?

[Michelle Smith]

Lit the flame the first time, Walked out most of the rest because that cut scene looks cool lol.

[Natasha Callaghan]

The Mercury upgrade path added poison damage in Demon's Souls. There is no equivalent in Dark Souls.

I chose the 'bad' ending first time round, and was disappointed with the anti-climactic cutscene.

[Kim Bradley]

Raw is only good at very low levels, when you don't have access to anything else. (although you do have access, but it's harder to do)
It's basically a waste of resources to make Raw.

Don't forget that you can reverse any upgrades... so it's not a total waste.
I believe a +5 Raw can be reversed once to a +5 standard.

I've seen both so many times
But I think I lit the bonfire the first time, because I didn't even know there was another option.

[Rhi Edwards]

I'd also advocate avoiding raw upgrades. Same goes for crystal.

I exclusively use the Moonlight Butterfly Horn. It's not the strongest weapon in the world, but it has great range, allows my squishy mage to turtle behind a shield, has some decent scaling with INT, and looks completely awesome (especially as a Sunbro with a Dark Hand and Set of Favor or the Shiny Brass Set).

[NAtIVe GOddess]

Here's a few of my pro PvP builds.

Solo Forest host PvP builds

http://mmdks.com/25x5

http://mmdks.com/25x6

http://mmdks.com/25x8

http://mmdks.com/25x9

Anor Londo WoG invader build

http://mmdks.com/25x7

Glass cannon invader mage build

http://mmdks.com/25xa

SL 11 Parish invader build

http://mmdks.com/1ugq

[dell]

In theory, they are good for low levels. However, elemental weapons completely destroy them in terms of damage output, as the base damage is so much higher.

[john palmer]

Hmmm...you are right. Wonder why there is no poison path in Dark Souls. Would be neat if there was a bleeding/poison path for weapons. Maybe both rolled into one but the stats for the weapons get drastically reduced? I could see how that would become a pain in the ass though.

I had no idea what was going on. I killed Gwyn looked around for abit, somehow missed the fire thing and walked out accidentally triggering the other ending.

Hmm...can you still buff Raw Weapons with items and spells/miracles? I could see it outperforming them then.

[Sarah Knight]

I didn't even know there were two endings, I just lit the flame because I thought I was supposed to to complete the game.

[Charlie Ramsden]

You should stop listening to Frampt's lies.