Demon's Souls

[MrPopo]

Me and my friend played the damn thing from 4pm yesterday to 9 am this morning. I don't think I've laughed so hard or been so terrified in a long time. I'm lvl 64 now and I'm going to attempt to fight whatever is at the tower of latria. We only stopped playing because we were on that level for about an hour with some other guy we summoned, and we were ready to move on to the next floor when I stupidly ran back to gofind the other guy, and fell down a hole in the floor and died.

My favorite PVP moment from the game was near the beginning of the second part of the tower. It involves several spires that have a narrow lip around the edge. I noticed an item and went to go snag it (turns out coming from the other direction would involve less mortal danger). Well, I hadn't noticed the Black Phantom invasion message, so as I'm inching along this ledge the black phantom comes around and stabs me in the back with his spear, getting the backstab bonus. Fortunately, it's not enough to kill me. But then the second part of the backstab kicks in; he pushes against my back to retrieve the spear. This propels us both off the ledge. And according to the game, he lands first. So not only did he miss out on getting the free rez from killing me, but he lost souls for dying to environmental damage.

[(-_-)]

I finally got summoned by someone, killed the penetrator, and got sent back to 4-2? The area before the reaper. And I was like, well now that I'm here, I may as well grab the souls and head back to the nexus to level up. So I ran down, killed the reaper, shot down some flying manta rays, and was heading up to the achstone, and then I saw fog pop up over the entrance and I died a little inside. I ran up to it as fast as possible to see if I could get through and then the phantom message popped up. In complete horror I booked it back down the stairs to that little area on the left side that you access by either falling off the stairs, or walking along the tiny tiny tiny little cliffside and just hid in the corner of the pillar of the stairs. Sure enough, i see the phantom stomping down the stairs running around. I had aboslutely no idea what to do so i just left it there for about 20 minutes hoping he'd go away. He didn't. I watched him get progressively angrier because he coudln't find me. He stomped around, and started shooting off arros and stabbing things and using magic because I could hear the sounds and see projectiles flying off. My friend came online and I told him to drop a stone near my spot to see if I could summon him. It worked and he joined my world and got completely destroyed by the phantom. We did this twice. Eventually he found me when he saw y friend come out from around the pillar. He tried to stab me with the halberd and managed to knock out half my stamina and do a third damage to my health, while my shield was up. He did it a second time but missed and launched himself off of the cliff and died. I laughed hysterically, left my spot and headed up to the archstone. AND I GOT INVADED AGAIN

Ran back to the god damn spot and hid for another ten minutes
till he got angry as well, and started using rage of god or whatever it's called till he saw me get blown back out of the corner
and did this about 10 times. I healed, he used magic, ate spice etc. At the same time my friend is dropping his stone to try and help me out and gets killed a bunch of times. He gave up the whole rage of god thing and tried to just stab me with his halberd, found out it was successful, and kept doing this untill he accidentally fell down onto the same spot I was. I panicked and tried to shove him off the cliff but just wailed on me and killed me in two hits.

SIGH

[Niode]

I finally got summoned by someone, killed the penetrator, and got sent back to 4-2? The area before the reaper. And I was like, well now that I'm here, I may as well grab the souls and head back to the nexus to level up. So I ran down, killed the reaper, shot down some flying manta rays, and was heading up to the achstone, and then I saw fog pop up over the entrance and I died a little inside. I ran up to it as fast as possible to see if I could get through and then the phantom message popped up. In complete horror I booked it back down the stairs to that little area on the left side that you access by either falling off the stairs, or walking along the tiny tiny tiny little cliffside and just hid in the corner of the pillar of the stairs. Sure enough, i see the phantom stomping down the stairs running around. I had aboslutely no idea what to do so i just left it there for about 20 minutes hoping he'd go away. He didn't. I watched him get progressively angrier because he coudln't find me. He stomped around, and started shooting off arros and stabbing things and using magic because I could hear the sounds and see projectiles flying off. My friend came online and I told him to drop a stone near my spot to see if I could summon him. It worked and he joined my world and got completely destroyed by the phantom. We did this twice. Eventually he found me when he saw y friend come out from around the pillar. He tried to stab me with the halberd and managed to knock out half my stamina and do a third damage to my health, while my shield was up. He did it a second time but missed and launched himself off of the cliff and died. I laughed hysterically, left my spot and headed up to the archstone. AND I GOT INVADED AGAIN

Ran back to the god damn spot and hid for another ten minutes
till he got angry as well, and started using rage of god or whatever it's called till he saw me get blown back out of the corner
and did this about 10 times. I healed, he used magic, ate spice etc. At the same time my friend is dropping his stone to try and help me out and gets killed a bunch of times. He gave up the whole rage of god thing and tried to just stab me with his halberd, found out it was successful, and kept doing this untill he accidentally fell down onto the same spot I was. I panicked and tried to shove him off the cliff but just wailed on me and killed me in two hits.

SIGH

That sounds amazing (for the emergent game play aspect) and horrifying in equal measures. I've never been invaded by a black phantom. Possibly due to the time that I play (I have an American import copy, thanks again Hobie-Wan ) so I guess I'm quite lucky in that context. However I am a little upset that I have never experienced one of these bowel loosening horror moments of a Black Phantom invading your world. I think you handled it well, I would have laughed my ass off if a BP invaded me and then killed themselves.

[the7k]

Oh man, I love when a Black Phantom invades my world. I always carry anti-Black Phantom equipment on me, so I'm usually completely invisible to them until they are right next to me.

My strategy is to use the Demonbane, put on my Thief's Ring and the Anti-Black Phantom Ring (Can't remember the name), double-hand it, and just wait around a corner that I know they'll come around. They walk by, I follow closely behind, and then they get back-stabbed for massive damage. So delicious.

[(-_-)]

Oh man, I love when a Black Phantom invades my world. I always carry anti-Black Phantom equipment on me, so I'm usually completely invisible to them until they are right next to me.

My strategy is to use the Demonbane, put on my Thief's Ring and the Anti-Black Phantom Ring (Can't remember the name), double-hand it, and just wait around a corner that I know they'll come around. They walk by, I follow closely behind, and then they get back-stabbed for massive damage. So delicious.

How does cloaking work? I haven't bought it, nor do I have enough magic stats to bother with it, but while I was getting attacked by phantoms above, my friend was flipping out because he said the phantom was invisible, and he was using rage of god while invisible and the only time you could see him is when he attacked. Are you completely invisible with that ring, or is there some sort of haze or outline that they can still see?

[the7k]

It seems like the more 'cloak' you have (which can be added through equipment like Thief's Ring and spells - also, walking instead of running gives you more cloak), the closer you can get to an enemy before you become visible. Once you come within that range, you'll just begin to come into view in a 'scanline' sorta way... dunno how to explain it.

But, basically, you are either visible or not. It's not like a MGS Stealth Camo deal, where you can see the environment shifting or anything.

[(-_-)]

Ok, yeah, I see how the ring works now. I managed to sneak up on a phantom. I died, but I got pretty damn close before he noticed me. And I just lost 80 000 souls to a fucking phantom... Also, Allant attacked me and it said I lost a soul level. What does that mean? Does that mean I randomly lost an upgrade and it still costs me the same amount to upgrade to the next level?

[the7k]

Yeah. Be careful around the False King.

Some people actually use the Soul Level decrease to their advantage. I've heard of people who make the False King steal their Soul Level to the point where their Luck = -99, which allows them to buff the hell out of their remaining stats. Seems like too much of a hassle to me.

[(-_-)]

So I just got an email from atlus saying they are going to celebrate extended online support for Demon's souls to march 2011. I'm not entirely clear about what this means. Do they intend to shut down the servers and incapacitate the multiplayer component? The best freaking part of the game?

[the7k]

I dunno, but that does seem likely. I wish that when companies abandon their servers, they'd at least patch the game beforehand to allow Peer-To-Peer play.