Comment on Warriors in Dark Souls 2 have such a lame mid-game compared to mages
catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago Update on my DS2 playthrough:
I went through all the shops that could offer some weapons and bought out everything that looked interesting. Checked all the bought stuff, upgraded some all the way to +6 and then checked out around Drangleic. Some thoughts:
I bought rapier and estoc to check them out. I liked estoc a bit more because it has higher poise damage (it’s actually the same as of the longsword!) and better stat scaling for my build so now it’s my fastest weapon in the arsenal. It helped a lot clearing through Drangleic’s “surprising d6” with ruin sentinels.
I added uchigatana to the lonely washing pole and checked both of them out. Holy damn!! Washing pole is crazy, feels like I’m a boss, with my attacks reaching for half the arena lol. I knew it was quite large but not this much! Uchigatana is a nice fast weapon, it might replace my longsword in the long run. I really appreciate that both of them have thrust as their strong attack.
I got the regular twinblade back in the Castle so I checked it out - and was disappointed as in one hand its’ attacks are pretty basic. Only at the end of the session, when I got to the entrance of the Crypt, had I found the red twinblade - and this one does have a unique moveset even when held with one hand! I’ll check it out later.
I also bought red rust sword and shield crossbow with no real plan on what to do with them (if anything). The rust sword is pretty interesting as it seems to have the moveset of axes while shield crossbow will likely just be in my collection of crossbows as it doesn’t look as cool as the light crossbow.
Now, all this departure felt really good because the next place I needed to go to was the dreaded Shrine of Amana. The way to the third bonfire was nerve-wracking. Fighting the ogre knowing that it will murder me in two successive hits is fucking scary. Not to mention the precarious paths for the estus shard, with all the deep water around…
In the end, I managed to get through the Shrine without dying at all. I believe it might first time doing it deathless. And I got everything I could except for the crown. Pyromancers killed me plenty though :D Why do they have poise???
The Crypt is next and I’m excited as I quite like it!
skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Nice!!
I never liked the estoc much, myself. I’m not sure why, really, I just never used it over other thrusting swords I guess. I liked the rapier for its parry and mostly stuck to that one when I wanted to go fencing.
Estoc is good though! Nice and fast, and long. Speaking of,
Lmao, no kidding. “I am the boss fight now” is a great way of describing it, actually, lol. Watch that durability though. Thing snaps like a twig at the slightest provocation, DS2 is really the only souls game that I find myself actively worrying about my equipment durability sometimes. Keep those repair powders on deck.
Funny story, actually, durability loss used to be WAY WAY WORSE and got patched down. Something to do with how the game calculated durability combined with now running at 60FPS meant that you could break certain weapons literally on a single hit. I think it was because the weapon spent a lot of time inside the enemy model and subtracted durability for every frame it was intersecting. It was REAL bad.
Re: Twinblades, they are definitely 2H weapons. You can swing them one handed but generally you shouldn’t, I wouldn’t advise them unless you’re ready and willing to put both hands on it regularly.
I like the rust swords, I don’t think they’re the best in their respective weapon types but I like wearing them as a paired set, they’re neat.
Shield crossbow I think is just bad, unfortunately, lol.
Nice job on Amana! I don’t hate it as much as I think most of the playerbase does because I’ve learned to game it pretty effectively by now, and I think it’s really pretty. It’s rough going in unfamiliar with it though, and I still usually have some trouble with the big arena near the end with all the red phantoms and snipers. This place also got nerfed in difficulty in a patch, lol.
Crypt is not my favorite area in the game but the boss fight there might be. Good luck! And remember to come back and see Agdayne after you’re finished here to buy a cool sword.
I have no idea why did they get rid of the mechanic in their next games. It’s pretty good IMHO. Sure, it doesn’t influence every hour of play but I like how it incentivizes me to pick up and upgrade more than one weapon, just in caze. Honestly, it could be even more aggressive. And that’s me talking with the Champion’s covenant!
Well, I had the feeling it isn’t anything good.
I respect this area. It’s arguably the hardest mandatory location in the main game, particularly the run between the second and third bonfires. Mages, clerics, ogres, those sneaky bastards, treasure luring into deep water… it’s just a very cruel place in general. I remember being particularly terrified of the archdragon clerics in my first playthrough.
skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Durability technically exists in every main line Souls game as well as Bloodborne, it’s just mostly a non-issue (until you forget about it entirely and your main weapon breaks mid boss fight). I think it mostly just serves as an annoyance in Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne, because the game never really goes out of its way to tell you that you need to repair your weapon, and in DS1 you have to go out of your way to buy a whole smithbox about it or go visit a smith in person.
2 solves this by making your gear repair at bonfires, which was a GREAT change and I was a big fan of it. Many people were not. It also didn’t help that durability was bugged for a while to be even worse than it was intended to be. In response to that backlash DS3 technically shares the same mechanic, but durability was buffed to such an extent that I don’t think I’ve ever actually been in danger of breaking any of my gear, unless being hit by acid attacks, so in practice they just removed durability but in truth it’s still there hiding in the background.
In Bloodborne they went back to having to repair your weapon at the smith station in the Hunter’s Dream and the decision baffles me, but you also only ever have to do it like once every 7 hours so it was whatever.
How’s the Crypt been treating you? Did you light the torches?
The way durability works in DS2 is by far my favorite. In DS1 it’s just a chore you must do from time to time, and in Demons Souls it’s actually quite a big tax on your souls, at least in the early game.
And I didn’t know that Bloodborne also use this type! I mean, it kinda makes sense since you can’t sit at a checkpoint but it could just as well be removed from the game entirely tbh. But I never played Bloodborne (no PS4) so what do I know!
In DS3 it’s so lenient that it might as well may not exist. I don’t think I ever depleted even half the durability bar on my weapon. I generally have issue with how DS3 devs tried to streamline everything and seriously overdid it (removed poise, return to mana, covenants as items, etc).
I haven’t played since the Amana session. Job hunting drains my time and energy, and summer’s heat is already here so it’s hard to just comfortably sit down at my PC and game for awhile. I do want to play though!