What are you playing?

[Xeogred]

@Exhuminator: What kind of build or focus you rocking anyways? Magic can be crazy OP in Demon's haha. Magic isn't my style in these at all but I think it might be fun to try and play one of these with a magic build someday (which would inadvertently be a challenge for me since it's so not my playstyle).

I'm a male soldier, with a soldier shield, and a scimitar+2. I've leveled up my Strength, Endurance, and Luck quite a few times. I have no magic, I don't even know how you get magic in this game let alone use it.

You should look into that scimitar. What does it scale with? I'm thinking DEX... so you should maybe switch to something that scales with STR.

Luck is basically broken and worthless. A point or two isn't bad to up your item discovery but that's it.

So then I went on to 2-1, and did OK, until I got to the fire salamanders. Those stupid things don't even leave souls when they die, they're just there to ignite your ass. Anyway, they took me out twice in a row, cost me about 2500 souls. I was perturbed.

Haha, they never gave me trouble but with a scimitar I bet they suck.

One thing that really aggravates me is the inconsistency of the parry maneuver. It seems random as hell if it's going to work or not. Also the back-stab attack seems completely arbitrary too. It's hard to rely on skills like that when they're so fickle in execution.

I wouldn't even bother with both parrying and back stabs in Demon's. The most important thing about Demon's is rolling. Dark Souls makes parrying and backstabs work and is a lot more crucial.

And yes the checkpoint system in Demon's Souls sucks ass. From what I can tell, you only get a checkpoint when you kill a boss. You're pretty much guaranteed to die the first time you fight a boss, so you lose your souls right there. And then you get stuck in a cycle of soul reclamation / loss until you finally kill the boss. I don't think it would have made the game too easy to just give the player a checkpoint before a boss, given how long the stages are already.

Suck it up man, lol. I was saying the complete opposite. I LOVE Demon's checkpoint system. You are forced to master the levels and boss in one run, just like classic games or a shmup or something. Checkpoints by the bosses door in the later games? Now that sucks ass. Lame sauce.

There are shortcuts sometimes, anyways.

Anyway, I'm going to have to figure something out with my doofy little soldier guy. I shouldn't be turned into meat paste from just one hit of that tower knight's attack. It seems like From Software designed this game so that you would constantly grind for souls in order to gain levels, raising your stats. I know people say you can beat this game completely naked with just a twig between your fingers, but that's only applicable to someone who's already put hundreds of hours into it. On a more realistic note; it's clear From Software intended for grinding up souls and slowly eking out more powerful stats until you overcome a boss, rinse repeat. Obviously stats matter or they wouldn't be such an integral part of the game design.

I wouldn't say so, you really don't have to grind much. I guess if you're dying and losing souls then yeah. 4-1 is by far the best place to do it. And like isiolia said, it doesn't sound like you put anything into HP. Also do you have the ring that helps negate the HP halving when you're not in body form? That should help a lot and is pretty much a permanent equip haha. Can't remember where and when you get it but I think it's early.

I had a feeling 1-2 was going to mess you up and you'd love that dragon.

[Exhuminator]

You can buy and/or trade certain items for spells from NPCs that end up in the Nexus when you find them.

Ahh gotcha, guess those NPCs haven't shown up in my Nexus yet.

To be fair, even DS3 lacks facial animation, so intricacies like that just probably aren't in scope.

You'd think as much as these games sell, adding in something as rudimentary as dismemberment would be a no-brainer. It'd only sell the games more.

You didn't mention Vitality as something you'd put points into, though Stamina (via Endurance) is also key.

No I haven't put points in Vitality. I'll start focusing on that stat for a while.

You should look into that scimitar. What does it scale with?

I'm not sure how to tell what a weapon scales with. Is there an obvious way to understand this in the menu? As an aside, I find the weird icons that are supposed to indicate stats of gear to just be dumb. Something more intuitive would have made more sense. It looks like FS fixed that in Dark Souls thankfully.

Luck is basically broken and worthless. A point or two isn't bad to up your item discovery but that's it.

That's all I was doing, trying to get my item drop rate above 50%, which supposedly I did.

The most important thing about Demon's is rolling.

The problem is my soldier rolls like a drunken sloth. I understand if I take all my armor off, I could roll more quickly. But of course if I do get hit, I'll probably die from one or two attacks. Is there a skill that you can upgrade which makes you roll faster even if you're not naked?

You are forced to master the levels and boss in one run, just like classic games or a shmup or something.

I get where you are coming from in a "hardcore" sense. But from a "grown ass man with very limited gaming time sense" it's just not ideal. If I prove to the game I'm already good enough to get through the stage and reach the boss, then I should just have to take the boss on from there on out. Forcing the player to redo the whole stage if they die to the boss is just needlessly punitive. From Software obviously realized this after Demon's Souls, since it sounds like you're saying there are checkpoints before bosses in the rest of the series.

4-1 is by far the best place to do it.

Are you saying 4-1 is the best place to grind for souls?

Also do you have the ring that helps negate the HP halving when you're not in body form?

Yes I found the Cling Ring early on, pretty vital piece of kit. Also, do any of the other Souls games halve your HP if you die? Or is this just a Demon's thing?

[prfsnl_gmr]

Curved swords scale with dexterity.

4-1 is the best place to grind for souls.

Rolling is critical to survival.

Dexterity builds are the best.

Be sure to find the thief's ring in 1-1 for some hot backstabbing action.

[Xeogred]

I'm not sure how to tell what a weapon scales with. Is there an obvious way to understand this in the menu? As an aside, I find the weird icons that are supposed to indicate stats of gear to just be dumb. Something more intuitive would have made more sense. It looks like FS fixed that in Dark Souls thankfully.

Should be letter grades or whichever stat is an items highest requirement to use it is probably it. I just looked it up and the Scimatar is a DEX weapon.

Intuitive and Demon's?

The problem is my soldier rolls like a drunken sloth. I understand if I take all my armor off, I could roll more quickly. But of course if I do get hit, I'll probably die from one or two attacks. Is there a skill that you can upgrade which makes you roll faster even if you're not naked?

Not really, just need to pump endurance. But when you work on some of your HP and find better lighter armor that should help.

I get where you are coming from in a "hardcore" sense. But from a "grown ass man with very limited gaming time sense" it's just not ideal. If I prove to the game I'm already good enough to get through the stage and reach the boss, then I should just have to take the boss on from there on out. Forcing the player to redo the whole stage if they die to the boss is just needlessly punitive. From Software obviously realized this after Demon's Souls, since it sounds like you're saying there are checkpoints before bosses in the rest of the series.

Either way are you expecting to beat levels on your first run? Asking for a miracle there. And even if you want to argue about real time here, Demon's is short compared to the other games.

Are you saying 4-1 is the best place to grind for souls?

Yeah.

Yes I found the Cling Ring early on, pretty vital piece of kit. Also, do any of the other Souls games halve your HP if you die? Or is this just a Demon's thing?

They all have some kind of system like this. Best to just see body forms as bonus HP.

[isiolia]

The problem is my soldier rolls like a drunken sloth. I understand if I take all my armor off, I could roll more quickly. But of course if I do get hit, I'll probably die from one or two attacks. Is there a skill that you can upgrade which makes you roll faster even if you're not naked?

Effectively, yes, Endurance will increase your equip weight. Souls games have different rolls depending on how much of your equip weight you're using. In DeS, if you're below half, you'll do a normal roll. If you're above half, you do a fat roll. You do not want to fat roll.
The Dark Souls games shift fat rolling to 70%+ and do more in between (they also have a fast roll for low encumbrance).
Bloodborne has no equip weight, making all that irrelevant.

Keep in mind that equip weight accounts for all weapons/shields you have on, not just whichever you're using at the time.

From Software obviously realized this after Demon's Souls, since it sounds like you're saying there are checkpoints before bosses in the rest of the series.

It still varies some, but a lot of runs back are fairly short (keep in mind that you can usually just sprint past a lot of stuff, and are usually fairly invincible once you touch the fog wall...except in DS2, because DS2 hates you and wants you to know it).

Progressively though, they tend to get better. DS3's DLC more or less has bonfires right outside every boss (except the hidden one, which is still only a short run with no enemy encounters on the way).

Yes I found the Cling Ring early on, pretty vital piece of kit. Also, do any of the other Souls games halve your HP if you die? Or is this just a Demon's thing?

Dark Souls - HP is constant between forms. You can get cursed, however, which will halve your max HP until you get cured... but that's different.
Dark Souls II - Max HP is reduced each time you die down to a cap of 50%, but gets reset when you become human. There is a similar ring that caps this loss at 80%, and since you have four ring slots, it's much less of an impact to keep on.
Additionally, if you complete all three DLCs and get some cutscenes, the crowns you get from those, when worn, will also prevent you from turning hollow when you die, removing the HP reduction mechanic (that benefit does get reset if you proceed to a new game cycle though).
Dark Souls III - Kind of. The base HP you have at all times is comparable to what full HP would be in other games. However, when Embered, you get additional HP...so technically you do have less HP when hollow, but it doesn't feel as much like a handicap there (no part of the gauge locked off or anything)
Bloodborne doesn't have two states for you to be in, so it's not really relevant.

[Exhuminator]

Curved swords scale with dexterity.

4-1 is the best place to grind for souls.

Rolling is critical to survival.

Dexterity builds are the best.

Be sure to find the thief's ring in 1-1 for some hot backstabbing action.

Thanks, and I missed the Thief's Ring dang it.

Intuitive and Demon's?

I'm just saying that in the King's Field and Shadow Tower games, statistical icons in the menus were very self explanatory. I don't know why From decided to go with cryptic icons in this case, I guess because they're language agnostic? Who knows.

And even if you want to argue about real time here, Demon's is short compared to the other games.

I assume you meant compared to the other Souls games. And looking at HLTB, that appears to be the case. (HLTB shows Demon's to average 32 hours for base campaign.)

-

I was reading on some other forums that the easiest way to beat Demon's Souls, is to start with the royal class, and just use ranged magic the whole way through. I'm glad I didn't do that, I don't think combat would be as engaging or meaningful.

-

Alright guys thanks for the tips. Time to git gud (or rather explore 4-1 for a while).

PS

Thanks for the breakdown Isiolia.

[Fragems]

Started up Pokemon Fire Red and man is this game a time sink . Four hours in and I'm only on the second gym. I don't remember this game being this grindy . Misty is whipping my ass with her Starmie . I can ko her Staryu without a scratch but she just spams super potions and recover whenever I get Starmie below half health and it basically 1 hits every pokemon I have including my lvl 22 Pikachu and those that don't get killed instantly usually get confused and kill themselves .

Did they really screw with the balancing or something with the remake? I don't remember having to grind much as long as I hit all the trainer battles in the area around each gym.

[Exhuminator]

time sink / grindy

Isn't that the whole point of Pokemon?

[PartridgeSenpai]

Started up Pokemon Fire Red and man is this game a time sink . Four hours in and I'm only on the second gym. I don't remember this game being this grindy . Misty is whipping my ass with her Starmie . I can ko her Staryu without a scratch but she just spams super potions and recover whenever I get Starmie below half health and it basically 1 hits every pokemon I have including my lvl 22 Pikachu and those that don't get killed instantly usually get confused and kill themselves .

Did they really screw with the balancing or something with the remake? I don't remember having to grind much as long as I hit all the trainer battles in the area around each gym.

Naw, confusion has just always been bullshit. There's just a LOT of it in gen 1 because so many common Pokemon can learn it. Same goes for shit like sleep or paralysis because EVERYONE can fucking paralyze you. Gen 1 Pokemon is a bit unbalanced and unfun in that way

[Fragems]

Started up Pokemon Fire Red and man is this game a time sink . Four hours in and I'm only on the second gym. I don't remember this game being this grindy . Misty is whipping my ass with her Starmie . I can ko her Staryu without a scratch but she just spams super potions and recover whenever I get Starmie below half health and it basically 1 hits every pokemon I have including my lvl 22 Pikachu and those that don't get killed instantly usually get confused and kill themselves .

Did they really screw with the balancing or something with the remake? I don't remember having to grind much as long as I hit all the trainer battles in the area around each gym.

Naw, confusion has just always been bullshit. There's just a LOT of it in gen 1 because so many common Pokemon can learn it. Same goes for shit like sleep or paralysis because EVERYONE can fucking paralyze you. Gen 1 Pokemon is a bit unbalanced and unfun in that way

Well I looked into it and it appears the thing that was bugging the shit out of me was a change they made. Misty's pokemon mainly use Water Pulse in the remake which is a Generation III move they used in place of bubble beam and water gun. Basically it's as powerful as bubble beam and has the added effect of a 20% chance of confusion . They also gave Starmie the recover technique that it didn't have in the originals so basically it can fully recover HP multiple times during the battle. The cherry on the cake is they also swapped out tackle for swift which is much more powerful so it's even strong against Pokemon not effected by water.

Ended up scrapping by with this team but just barely after getting whited out 4-5 times . In the original you could usually get through with a 3-4 pokemon in the mid teens .

Pidgeotto lvl 20
Butterfree lvl 12
Pikachu lvl 22
Charmeleon lvl 22
Geodude lvl 15
Oddish lvl 15



So basically I ended up going to the next city up and grinding since all the wild pokemon in the area were only lvl 7-10 and I needed to boost at least 2-3 of my pokemon to 20+ to stand a chance . I also chose Charmander as my starter so that had me at a disadvantage hopefully from here on things are a little more manageable.