Don't go hollow: Dark Souls 2

The Game Room
1

I’m a bit surprised nobody made a thread on this, but it looks like the last DS thread never got much traction either despite people talking about it all the time on this board.

Has anybody picked it up yet? It came out on PS3 and 360 a few days ago, and will come out on PC next month. Supposedly they hired a bunch of real PC developers, and actually developed the new engine code on PC first and then ported it to consoles (no, I don’t know why PC is coming out later then), so it shouldn’t be a shitty port this time.

I picked up the PS3 version, and I had it given to me as a preorder on Steam. I’ll probably move to PC after it comes out there, but until then, yay!

Even if you want to avoid spoilers, I heavily advise looking up the new mechanics. They’re just different enough from Dark Souls that I think having played it may put you at more of a disadvantage than a new player if you don’t learn them.

I’m planning on making a hex-based character. Hexes are a new form of magic that rely on both int AND faith. A lot of hexes have an interesting mechanic where they drain souls to have greater effects. For instance, Dark Magic Weapon can drain up to 2000 souls from you to greatly increase the dark damage it enchants the weapon with.

Some important things and minor hints (spoilered for length and people who want to figure out new mechanics themselves, no major plot spoilers):

[spoiler]Monsters have limited respawns, around 15. After you beat the area’s boss, you can use an item called a Bonfire Ascetic to put that area (and that area alone) in New Game+ difficulty, which will reset loot and respawn enemies at the higher difficulty. One word of warning is that this stacks with NG+. So if you use an ascetic in NG to make an area NG+, when you start an actual NG+ on that character, it will be like it’s NG++.

There are a few new stats. Notably, while all stats now increase health, the “health increase” stat is Vigor, not Vitality. Vigor also increases your equip load.

If you find certain items, you can respec by going back to the firekeepers at the beginning of the game.

There’s a sex change coffin somewhere in the prologue level if you want to change your character’s sex.

Weapon upgrades on separate paths now. No more arcane “get things to +5 then go to this blacksmith and…” nonsense. There are two things: upgrades and infusions. You can upgrade weapons to +10, and “infuse” them with fire/lightning/etc. These infusion materials are relatively common so it lets you swap out the damage type of your favorite weapon depending on the area you’re going to. That said, there are two blacksmiths that do different infusion paths.

You can get invaded while hollow, so there’s literally no reason to not be human except for a couple items that work better while hollow. To offset this, you can burn a human effigy (the item that turns out human) at any bonfire to lower the chance you’ll be invaded. You can still only summon friends while human.

Every time you die, you lose a little of your max life, up to a total of only having half a health bar. Becoming human reverses this. If you kill NPCs or invade other players with cracked red eye orbs, you gain “sin” which allows your max health to go below half when hollowed.

Soul levels seem to be easier to get, and item prices seem cheaper. Most people seem to finish the game around SL 120. I hear the most expensive item is 10k souls.

You get your flask and level up at a lady in Marjoram, the main town. Don’t leave until you find her, I hear a lot of players miss her.

If you’re not good, don’t join the covenant given to you by the tablet in Marjoram. Well, join it for the achievement and item, but immediately leave it. It makes everything harder. There’s a reason it asks you 3 times if you’re sure you want to join it. It also makes it so you can’t summon help.

You can warp between any two bonfires you’ve lit from the beginning of the game.
[/spoiler]

2

I enjoyed the first game a lot, so I’m more excited about Dark Souls 2 than any other game coming out right now. I’m still waiting for the PC version. I’ve been trying to avoid boss, map, item and story spoilers as I want to play it blind, but I don’t mind knowing about game mechanics in advance.

3

From what I could gather without spoiling myself (pre-ordered on PC, can’t wait) :

  • you can dual wield. Well, you already could in DS1 but there was little point to it outside of the parrying dagger (and even then…). In DS2 if you have two weapons of the same general type you can enter a special fighting stance that uses both, with a different moveset and more damage
  • you lose 10% of your max life when you die, up to 50% max. Dunno how you regain it, probably by going human
  • humanity and hollowing are still a thing, but work differently. I don’t know the specifics.
  • You can get invaded, invade and get summoned even when hollow. No escape. But apparently both invasions and summonings are now time limited, and there’s an item you can wear that makes mobs aggro on invaders too
  • Invasions are not just based on character level any more, but also on the “age” of the character (i.e. how long you’ve played that toon). So asshats ganking newbs with their SL1 guy wielding god’s own gear might not be a thing to be afraid of any more, or not as much.
  • there only one place where you can level, you can’t do it at any bonfire any more
  • the illusory walls are still there, but now you reveal them by trying to “open” them instead of smacking them like a dumb brute
  • respeccing is a thing now, but it’s not at will
  • there are consumable healing items on top of the estus flask, and consumable items that refill spell/pyro uses as well
  • Sunbros are still in. Praise the sun !
4

I’ve been playing for a week or so now and here’s my observations:

  1. Hard. Harder than DS1 IMHO mainly due to how quickly gear deteriorates in this game. Yeah it’s true that it repairs itself at bonfires, but in the early game it’s very hard to make it bonfire to bonfire before your weapons break if you are a melee character. This leads to you having to kill a bunch of MOBs and have to turn around and head back to your old bonfire, even though you have plenty of health, to repair your weapons.

  2. If you don’t have a guidebook it’s going to be slow going through this one, much like DS1. It’s annoying how forum dwellers brag about how far they’ve gotten so quickly when there’s no way they did it without some sort of guidebook. Im sorry, I just don’t believe that person X was able to beat the game and hit all the secrets 2-3 days after the game came out without using a guidebook. Impossible IMHO. Too many secrets and poorly explained items. Wouldn’t be so bad if they admitted that they had help but alot of them act like things were “so easy” to figure out.

  3. Don’t like the fact that you can only level up at a specific bonfire. Absolutely worthless design decision. All it does is slow you down, and not in a good way.

  4. Not a fan of the limited enemy respawns. For those that don’t know enemies will only respawn 15 or so times before they are gone forever. This creates problems for people like me who die over and over and lose souls before they can level up. I lost a ton of souls early on because I was learning the game mechanics but couldn’t build up enough souls to lvl up, so I would lose them and not be able to get back to my bloodstain to recover them. This would be fine if I could continue to kill and collect souls after I figure things out, but by the time I do they stop spawning and it’s on to the next area, under leveled. There are no soft enemies in this game at any level, meaning even the early zombie dudes can and will kill you pretty easily regardless of what level you are.

  5. The mood of the game is pretty close to DS1, though maybe a bit brighter.

  6. Melee combat is a little more floaty IMHO and has some weird delays in animations.

  7. Some enemies seem to have an extended “hit zone” where they swing a sword that you can see missing you but somehow it still registers a hit. This is particularly annoying at the 2nd boss.

  8. The camera needs hella work.

Probably going to pick up the guide and start a new character. Should go better now that I understand the mechanics more. I tried a warrior first and it was tough. Tried a sorcerer last night and it was super easy. Starts with a spell that hits for high damage from a long distance. Very easy to stay alive with him.

All in all it’s pretty good, though I really hate the weapon degradation aspect and the limited respawning of enemies. I wish the combat felt like DS1, this one just feels a bit squishier.

ETA 9) Every time you die your max health takes a semi-permanent hit until you get to 50% max. The only way around this is to turn human, which takes a item. This has lead to me essentially playing the entire game so far in Hollow form at half life. It’s too much IMHO when coupled with the fast weapon deterioration.

5

I don’t feel like I can have a fair opinion on whether this game is easier or harder than DkS. I died way more in the first game, but I was also stupidly adamant about learning how to parry everything. I also have more experience coming into this game.

I haven’t had much trouble with gear deterioration. If you’re using a wimpy weapon it could be more noticeable, because it takes more hits to kill things and thus it deteriorates more. You said you started with the warrior, which starts with the crappiest of crappy weapons. There have only been one or two times I’ve gotten into the danger zone. I generally recommend keeping a sidearm just in case, in No-Man’s Wharf I had to switch from my +4 broadsword to a +0 fire longsword I found just because that area is so long. I didn’t kill things quite as quickly and took more damage due to that, but I think I’m going to start upgrading a sidearm just to be safe in the longer areas. That or buy a bunch of repair powder.

Overall, I don’t know how to feel about the durability change. On one hand, except in a small handful of cases durability in the original was a joke, on the other hand, the new system just adds needs for no reason.

I had the Forest of the Giants spoiled for me, but other than that I haven’t and I only had one real problem where I got confused so far (there’s something special you have to do to summon the boss in No-Man’s Wharf that I completely missed).

Yeah, not quite sure about that. Since they added teleports to anywhere it’s not a huge deal, but a confusing decision.

I was worried about people having that problem. I’ve only lost my bloodstain 2-3 times, but every time it’s like “whelp there’s 10k souls permanently removed from the game”. I think the intention was to make it more tolerable to make boss runs after 15 failures, but it’s absolutely detrimental if you’re having issues with the level itself.

The “solution” of bonfire ascetics just slaps people who aren’t really good in the face.

I haven’t noticed that, but other people have.

You’re going to have to be more specific since there’s at least 4 bosses that could conceivably be “second” :p. I assume you mean the Pursuer, who definitely has odd hit detection on his charging move. It took me a while to learn exactly what direction and timing to dodge in. I think this was in DS1 though, people just didn’t notice it as much because rolling had a lot more invincibility frames.

There’s a super useful option in the options menu that lets you turn off camera autocorrect. I forgot what it’s called though.

Most people seem to agree that warrior is an atrocious starting class with bad stat spread and a worthless starting item. Try the Knight instead. Yeah, you lack a shield, but except for the giant ogres the tutorial should be easy. You can two-shot the enemies by two-handing the broadsword and using weak attacks. (And, honestly, you don’t have to fight anything in the tutorial, you can run down the path ignoring the fog doors and head straight to Majula, but you won’t have any souls then).

After that, you can buy the Silver Eagle Kite Shield from the armorer, which is a pretty good shield

In No-Man’s Wharf (if you can get that far) there’s a secret room that holds a ring that’s essentially a Ring of Sacrifice. Except instead of being destroyed when you die, you have to go to the blacksmith and repair it for 3K souls. Also of note is that in the Tower of Heide there’s a ring called the “Ring of Binding” that reduces the max HP loss while hollow to 75% of max rather than 50%.

6

Waiting for PC version as well.

Apparently the Devs have been working on the PC version first, and released shots/video of the PC version. Now there’s like a 50 page thread on Gaff about how the console gamers were deceived!!!

Jeebus, it’s 7 year old hardware and they said they were working on the PC version when those shots came out.

7

You shouldn’t buy Dark Souls 2 until they fix Dark Souls 1 to accommodate the GFWL shutdown.

8

Why? Everyone knows DS1 was a shitty port that used shitty GLFW, I see no reason to punish them except by advising people to not buy the first game. DS2 is going to use Steamworks, so it should work fine.

9

One thing to note about the PC version: for $50 and a preorder, you get everything in the $120 console collector’s edition, (except digital instead of physical).

10

Because people paid money for Dark Souls and they should be able to play their game beyond July. Not buying the next game is the only clout you have against Namco.

11

You can still play it, you just can’t do online stuff. Which is a chunk of the game, and a significant one for some people, yes, but it’s not like nobody can play it at all and the vast majority of the content is still doable. Pretty much the only thing you can’t do is advance in some of the covenants.

I don’t do boycotts anyway.

12

Dark Souls 2 here fellas

13

You can’t install it. It hits GFWL as DRM on install.

14

Actually, I think the intended solution might simply be PvP, which apparently is more ingrained into the game this time around.
Of course, if you dislike PvP and the cheesedickery that goes on there (and, if you’re playing on PC, the outright hacking and cheating), that doesn’t help. It is an infinitely renewable source of souls though. You don’t even have to be a dick or nothing - sunbros make good money tanking bosses, from what I hear.

Also, be careful with those bonfire ascetics. From what I hear, be it by bug or design their effect carries over between playthroughs, so if you use one to, say, bump up a merchant’s inventory to enjoy NG+ items or respawn an early boss to farm its NG+ ass, then that boss will be NG++ should you run NG+, and so will the monsters around that merchant. Something to keep in mind.

Honestly, why anybody would pick something other than Cleric for their first playthrough boggles my mind. In DS1 the Heal miracle made faffing about walking into every trap and learning not to get roflpwnd by mooks soooo much easier. Since DS2 has the whole “screw your lifebar, git gud scrub” thing going on, additional sources of health to be used even if you only got slightly nicked seem all the more important.

Plus it seems the offensive miracles (lightning spear et al.) are broken powerful in this game, so there’s that too :slight_smile:

15

Not to get in the area of threadshitting, but does it have the same voice acting? I tried the first one and just couldn’t get past the first 30 minutes of the “Everybody’s on massive doses of horse tranquilizers” voice track.

16

Yeah, it still uses the same VA company, so if you hated it that much you’re going to hate it again. You can, as in DkS1, press X (A on XBox) to skip individual lines of dialogue so if you start to get bored you can just read the subtitle and skip the talking.

Cleric is a bit hurt by the fact that it lacks the strength to wield its starting weapon and a shield at the same time. My Knight (who I’m making into a hexer) has heal now, which is definitely useful in a “three extra out of battle Estus flask” sort of way.

You’re kind of right. You can install it, but I found out you can’t save if you’re not connected to GLFW. Either way, agree to disagree on the boycot thing. Besides, Namdai said they’re “thinking of solutions”. That’s wishy-washy and doesn’t mean they’ll actually do anything, but I hope they will.

17

I heard about that, but it’s only 1 point right ? (Besides, my last DkS run was with a pure STR, shitclub melee guy so I’ve gotten used to quickly switching shield on/off to hit stuff, and using rolls as my primary form of damage mitigation)

Right now, my big blind plan is : get that STR to rock the mace, then pump ADP to the 20s for the fast roll, pump STR again to dual wield maces/morningstars because the idea makes me emit evil chuckles, pump Stamina until I can get two full combos out of them and some spare, then finally start working on ATTN and FTH. Not sure when Vitality will come in though. I guess when I start dying too much or start getting invaded a lot :slight_smile:

From what I hear, dual wielding Cestus is pretty ridiculous too, however. Stunlock everything everyday. I might look into that because punching dragons to death ? Sounds a’ight.

18

I’m de-spoilering this because it’s important, and the stat stuff you find out basically the first time you level up in the first fifteen minutes.

But this is wrong…sort of.

Right now, EVERY stat increase will also increase your HP by a small amount. However, Vitality is still the “main” health stat, increasing Vitality will make your HP increase by 2-4 times as much as increasing a different stat. It also plays a role in resistances.

You are right that Vigor determines equip. load, as well as playing a part in your resistances to status effects and overall physical defense (resistances and defense use multiple stats.)

Other important stats:

Endurance determines stamina, as well as also playing a role in defense and resistances, and determining your “armor-less” poise.

Adaptability. A BRAND NEW stat not in Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls. Plays a few roles. It increases the speed that you roll, attack, and cast spells. It also helps with resistances and poise.

The other stats are basically the same as Dark Souls 1.

They REALLY increased the Faith scaling of the offensive miracles in this game. So Lightning Spear, Sun Spear, etc… are really only great if you go either straight Faith, or a combo of Faith/Int for a Hex build.

I rolled a Knight, because I like the idea of being mostly melee, with some offensive and defensive spells to fall back on in though situations, but it hasn’t been nearly as viable as it was in Dark Souls I. My Lightning Spears are ok against regular enemies, but when I fight bosses, which much higher overall resistances, they suck. I average less than 100 damage per spear against bosses.

I have 25 Faith, so I can only cast Lightning Spear, not Great Lightning Spear or Sun Spear. And it took almost twenty levels to get to that from the knight’s starting Faith. On top of that, I needed to spend almost ten levels just to get my Attunement high enough to let me have just ONE spell.

Kind of disingenuous to “advertise” a class as being a great melee and Faith mix-build, but have him start off so gimped, and make it so that to make his Faith part viable, you really have to completely forgo the melee half.

I think I’m going to go back and re-spec and remove my spells entirely and use all those extra levels to up my Stamina, Equip. Load, and Agility.

The diminishing returns on some of these stats are much worse now, too. Endurance, for instance, gives 2 stamina per point increase up to 20 (I think,) then only ONE stamina per point after that. Makes it harder to make a big, tank-y type melee character, ESPECIALLY when you then have to put a lot of points into Vitality to get your equip. load up.

However, that being said, the overall game seems to be designed for higher levels than Dark Souls 1. It was common to finish Dark Souls I in the 100-120 level range, and I think Dark Souls 2 is aiming for you to finish closer to 150.

'm about 2/3rds into the game, and I still reliably get summoned to help people with bosses and areas at SL 110.

19

Okay, here’s the stat rundown:

Vigor: Increases health the most
Endurance: Increases stamina
Vitality: Increases equip load, defense stats, and resistances
Attumenet: Increases attunement slots and agility
Strength: Increases ability to wield certain weapons (and affects strength scaling)
Dexterity: Increases ability to wield certain weapons (and affects dex scaling)
Adaptability: Increases agility and resistances
Faith: Allows you to use certain miracles; increases lighting damage a lot and fire damage a little
Int: Allows you to use certain spells; increases magic damage a lot and fire damage a little

Other notes:

Agility, increased mostly by adaptability and a little by attunement decreases spell casting speed, the amount of time it takes to drink an Estus flask, and the number of invincibility frames in a roll (not roll speed, that’s only affected by equip load).

Faith/Dark link: The spell class called hexes require both faith and int. Increasing the lower of faith and int increases your dark damage.

Endurance/Adaptability link: Increasing the lower of adaptability and endurance increases your natural poise. Poise affects the ability to withstand damage without staggering.

20

I rerolled a Knight and it’s a massive upgrade over the Warrior. The broadsword he starts with is 1M times better than anything the Warrior can find in the first 6 hrs.