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Aye, Izilath is poor, though not as much as Valley of the Drakes. It's seriously the only optional area in the game, and there is absolutely nothing in it. Ash lake is needed to join a covenant, and while VotD is the easiest place to get Dragon Scales, you can get them easily by PVPing/playing through enough times. There isn't even a sub boss in the Valley, and the only thing you can find in there is just good right off the bat (Arstoria's Straightsword).

Fafnir wrote:You can tell that From didn't really put much effort into Lost Izalith, and likely rushed the hell out of it for release because not only are there only 3 enemies in the entire area, one of them is just the legs of a zombie dragon standing upright, and there is no decent loot to pick up in the entire area.

Really though, whoever thought walking on lava would be a good idea should be fired.

Oh, I thought you meant the hardest area in the game. Now I understand, and I totally agree with you. It's a lame little area. I think the only 'special' boss fight that was good was the Dragon God in Demon Souls. Ceaseless Discharge is a joke, and BoC was poorly done.

Valley of the Drakes is stupid; not to mention how lame the zombie dragon is. Though my favorite area in the game so far has to be the Painted World of Aramais. It just fits the bleak atmosphere perfectly.

See, I think every area other than Valley the entire Demon Ruin's arc were well done; Anor Londo was very well done as a nice contrast to almost everything else in the game, and the rest of it was pleasently dark.

Blighttown! （╯°□°）╯ ︵ ┻━┻

Rabtorian wrote:Blighttown! （╯°□°）╯ ︵ ┻━┻

Go from the other side, down fire link shrine take the elevator down.
Out of elevator, jump down, move right and go in a small tower, take steps up.

You'll be in valley of drakes, go across first bridge , head right.

That is the exit of blight town, it only takes 5 minutes to get to the save point before the boss this route.

Do what LunaHound suggested. Or, you could just use the Firelink Shrine checkpoint instead of the one in Blighttown. That's what I did; plus you get the 10 estus flasks also. Though if you go the long way, only fight one enemy at a time. It reduces the lag somewhat.

Rabtorian wrote:Blighttown! （╯°□°）╯ ︵ ┻━┻

I personally feed off the misery Blighttown creates.

I am well fed.

LunaHound wrote:

Rabtorian wrote:Blighttown! （╯°□°）╯ ︵ ┻━┻

Go from the other side, down fire link shrine take the elevator down.
Out of elevator, jump down, move right and go in a small tower, take steps up.

You'll be in valley of drakes, go across first bridge , head right.

That is the exit of blight town, it only takes 5 minutes to get to the save point before the boss this route.

How do I take the elevator down, it only goes up to undead parish for me. The entry I have found is the one in the Depths, that you can open after beating the gaping dragon.

Rabtorian wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

Rabtorian wrote:Blighttown! （╯°□°）╯ ︵ ┻━┻

Go from the other side, down fire link shrine take the elevator down.
Out of elevator, jump down, move right and go in a small tower, take steps up.

You'll be in valley of drakes, go across first bridge , head right.

That is the exit of blight town, it only takes 5 minutes to get to the save point before the boss this route.

How do I take the elevator down, it only goes up to undead parish for me. The entry I have found is the one in the Depths, that you can open after beating the gaping dragon.

By fire link shrine's fire there is a guy in shinny armor sitting there whinning.
Next to him is a flight of stair that spirals down.
You'll see the mute fire keeper there, 10 steps away is the spiral stairs that keeps going down.

keep going down till you see a circular elevator, go down till its dark as night. get off elevator, move right till you see a crumbled tower,
go up the stairs till you see sunlight which is valley of dragons

LunaHound wrote:

Rabtorian wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

Rabtorian wrote:Blighttown! （╯°□°）╯ ︵ ┻━┻

Go from the other side, down fire link shrine take the elevator down.
Out of elevator, jump down, move right and go in a small tower, take steps up.

You'll be in valley of drakes, go across first bridge , head right.

That is the exit of blight town, it only takes 5 minutes to get to the save point before the boss this route.

How do I take the elevator down, it only goes up to undead parish for me. The entry I have found is the one in the Depths, that you can open after beating the gaping dragon.

By fire link shrine's fire there is a guy in shinny armor sitting there whinning.
Next to him is a flight of stair that spirals down.
You'll see the mute fire keeper there, 10 steps away is the spiral stairs that keeps going down.

keep going down till you see a circular elevator, go down till its dark as night. get off elevator, move right till you see a crumbled tower,
go up the stairs till you see sunlight which is valley of dragons

Thanks

Before you go down there, you might want to go back to the area where you start the game in. You'll find a ring that allow you to traverse muddy places without slowing to a crawl.

and perhaps some herbs that depoison
and detoxifies.

depends if you want to grab some extra loots or not.

What sort of level am I meant to be about now? I'm about 39, and am not very effective. Either I need to improve my skills, or have bad equipment, or I'm too low a level.

What are your stats/equipment? I was probably SL 30-40 when I fought Fatty and Slim.

I'm mainly using Zweihander +7, Lightning spear, Estoc+3 and Crest shield, whilst wearing Knight Gauntlets, Knight legs, Baulder chest, Fang Boar helm, rusty iron ring and blue tearstone ring. As for stats, 15 vitality, 10 attunement, 16 endurance, 24 strength, 15 dex, 11 resistance and 20 faith.

The only thing that really sticks out about your equipment is your fang boar helm; it's far too heavy for the stats it gives. Also, what levels are they?


You could use a bit more Vit and End, but other than that, there really isn't anything wrong with your stats, either.

Everything is the level given-no improvement on my armour yet. Looks like it's time to get better though.

Stop raising dex, and never raise resistance. Resistance is a terrible stat that does absolutely nothing.
You need more endurance to give you the weight allowance to use the heavy strength weapons effectively. Additionally, you should stop putting points into faith for now. Miracles are incredibly powerful, but they're pretty much useless until late game where you can get some of the more useful ones (and even then, they're not always the best choices for PvE, although they're excellent for PvP).

As for your equipment, you may want to consider upgrading your Zweihander to +10 (at which point you have no reason to use any of your other current weapons), or finding a new strength weapon (large club comes to mind). Zweihander's a good starting weapon, but its mixed scaling makes it difficult to effectively build around.
You can find a great club in the swamp, in a corner guarded by a group of boulder throwing fatties. Large club is dropped by fatties. Both weapons have their uses, with the great club having more raw power, while the large club has a better one-handed R2 attack.

As for your armour, you may want to consider the Elite Knight set. It's been a while since I've played, but I do believe they've buffed it back to its awesome stats. You can find it in the forest where you fight the moonlight butterfly, it's really easy to find. Just run past the golems and grab it (the golems aren't worth fighting, they give piss poor souls for the work needed to kill them).

Since you are going for a strength/faith build, one weapon you may want to consider is Grant. Requires 34 strength to wield with two hands (50 for one handed, although you'll likely be 2 handing it at all times anyway), and 30 faith. It's 2-handed R2 is Wrath of God, which makes it extremely potent to any faith character.

Ideally, with what you have now, if you want to go for a Grant build, your final build should look like this:

Vit: 40, Att: 12, End: 40, Str: 50, Dex: 15 Faith: 30

You can achieve this build by SL 125 with either a bandit, cleric, warrior, hunter, or knight. However, considering that you may have invested a point into resistance, it may not be possible.

Keep in mind the 15 dex is only there because you already have it listed.

Alternatively, if you still want to use brand, but don't want to waste stat points and feel okay using it exclusively with two hands (just have to get good at switching between your shield), you could try this:

Vit: 50, Att: 12, End: 40, Str: 34, Dex: 15, Faith: 37

34 strength lets you wield Grant with two hands, and although you'd think it would be a decrease in power from the above build, it's actually an insignificant loss, since diminishing returns mean that you'll still do about as much damage anyway. This means you have 16 additional stat points to spread, which can then be placed into health for more survivability, or faith for more damage. However you place those is up to you, just don't put faith above 40 and don't put vit above 50. Keep in mind that your extra stat points will depend entirely on what class you started with, assuming you're aiming for SL 125.

As far as miracles are concerned, Wrath of God, Heal, and Force are all good choices. However, if you're using Grant, you already have WoG built into the weapon, which means you only need 2 attunement slots (which is a godsend, since you want those stat points for other things). Greater magic shield can be useful against casters and enchanters, so it's also an option worth considering.

Thanks for the great advice. The 15 dex is just because I was usind winged spear for a while.

Just beat Nito. Was a lame fight. Just went around dying for a while, then I equipped the Crystal catalyst and he died in ten seconds. Was sorely disappointed.

Anyone got any tips for beating the second sphere on BoC? I always get 1 shotted.

Quit, log back in,you'll start outside the boss room, go back in. Also keep in mind that you CAN block the sweeps with your shield.

Just finished recording some footage (around 3 hours!) of Dark Souls for one of my classes, and boy, I've had 2 major revelations:

1. I'm rusty as hell. Not playing in months will do that to you. Can't backstab for crap, and can't dodge for crap. It doesn't help that I don't like using the Darkwood Grain Ring either. Or that my weapon of choice is the Large Club (one of the worst risk/reward combinations in the game). Still managed to keep my win/loss ratio at a bit over 50% for the first day of recording, but started to fall apart on the second.

2. Namely because of the freaking griefers. Holy crap. Nothing ruins kiln PvP like a good old fashioned gangbang. One invasion that I did (which sadly, I didn't manage to record) ended up with two people camping my spawn point with BKGAs and hitting me back and forth as soon as I spawned. I literally spent two hours against more random gang bangs than anything else. Ouch. Wasn't until later in the day that the 12 year olds stopped playing and I got some decent fight footage.

And as unforgiving as the Large Club is (especially mine, which is only +14 because those fething darkwraiths won't drop that fething last slab), I really should just stick to that. I can't use my Estoc to any level of competence anymore, and my Pyro/Faith character is just a sack of flesh as it is right now.
Additionally, as good as the BKGA is, I can't help but spam R1 over and over until I get parried.
Great Club just feels right and makes me play smarter. Also, the hornet ring backstab with the thing is fantastically brutal.

Fafnir wrote:2. Namely because of the freaking griefers. Holy crap. Nothing ruins kiln PvP like a good old fashioned gangbang. One invasion that I did (which sadly, I didn't manage to record) ended up with two people camping my spawn point with BKGAs and hitting me back and forth as soon as I spawned. I literally spent two hours against more random gang bangs than anything else. Ouch. Wasn't until later in the day that the 12 year olds stopped playing and I got some decent fight footage.

And as unforgiving as the Large Club is (especially mine, which is only +14 because those fething darkwraiths won't drop that fething last slab), I really should just stick to that. I can't use my Estoc to any level of competence anymore, and my Pyro/Faith character is just a sack of flesh as it is right now.
Additionally, as good as the BKGA is, I can't help but spam R1 over and over until I get parried.
Great Club just feels right and makes me play smarter. Also, the hornet ring backstab with the thing is fantastically brutal.

I know how you feel against those gangbangers. The only time I won one of those in invasion is when I was facing one dude and two phantoms and the kiln. They'd gotten a little cocky gangbanging people, so I killed all three of them. Only happened once though. The real duels are immensely fun, and I actually had a 21 kill streak at the kiln the other day.

As for your club, Dark Wraiths do not drop the titanite slab. You have to go back to the asylum and face the stray demon.



Also: just platinumned the game today!

No, they drop the slab. It's just very rare. You can get one through the stray demon, one through the Onionbro sidequest (which I screwed up, onionbro died), and an unlimited amount drop from Darkwraiths, although as I mentioned, quite rare.

I can get them to drop, just not on the right character. I already used both on my strength character, one on a Zweihander (waste considering the scaling), and one on a Demon's Great Axe (waste considering how it has no useful attacks). It's really annoying how many matches I've lost because the enemy survived by 15 HP, which the fully upgraded club would have taken right off.

When playing with the large club, I like to let my opponents come to me. Wait until they get ready to attack, and use the club's one-handed R2. The massive range makes it difficult to dodge once the enemy commits to an attack, and the damage output means you can reliably trade hits and still outdamage people. Additionally, the attack is safer than it looks, since it covers such a wide range, your opponents cannot safely approach from the front.
The downside however, is that it's insanely punishable on whiff. The vast majority of my deaths end up being backstabs from a whiffed club attack.

Also, I hate people who use estus or humanity in duels. Almost as bad as gangbangers.

Fafnir wrote:Also, I hate people who use estus or humanity in duels. Almost as bad as gangbangers.

Then you must hate the vast majority of players out there!

Back when I played often, healing was something you didn't do. At least, not with items.

I'm okay with people using miracles to heal, but healing items are just poor form.

Which is something I just find bizarre (that people would consider it bad form).

You know what I find bizarre?

"I can build a guy to run circles around you, that's TOTALLY cool.

But don't you dare use the spell that makes it where I can't run!"

MrDwhitey wrote:Which is something I just find bizarre (that people would consider it bad form).

It's impossible for black phantoms to use estus. In a fair duel, the hosting player shouldn't be using it. Furthermore, a duel should be about skill, not who farmed the most humanity.

Using the miracle Heal or Great Heal requires setting aside spell slots and investing in Faith. Additionally, it's not nearly as safe.

Slarg232 wrote:You know what I find bizarre?

"I can build a guy to run circles around you, that's TOTALLY cool.

But don't you dare use the spell that makes it where I can't run!"

As much as I hate Tranquil Walk of Peace, it's not as bad as it used to be. Maybe it's because I have a playstyle that doesn't involve moving around a lot (large club involves baiting enemy attacks and hitting back harder than they hit you). The problem with TWoP is that it makes it so you can't even dodge. For my large club build, that's just my cue to start swinging, but others are just totally shafted. I would like TWoP a lot more if they made it so it slowed both players. It wouldn't make TWoP so blatantly overpowered, and using it would force a completely different style of play. People would actually have to think about using it, and it wouldn't be something you could include on just any build and expect to succeed.

Really though, as it is, Dark Wood Grain Ring is my least favourite piece of equipment in the game. It's so good that pretty much every build has to take it. You'll never have a reason not to use it. It can get you out of hitstun, it provides incredible maneuverability, and it negates any of the advantages of going under 25% of your weight limit. Getting rid of DWGR and TWoP would make Dark Souls a better game, honestly.

I personally don't feel it's meant to be "fair".

There's a difference between your normal invasion, and a duel at the kiln.

Anywhere else, I have no problem with either player healing, but at the kiln, things tend to be a bit more organized.