Dark Souls 2: SotFS (or therefore, "Baa-baa Black Sheep" and other musings thread)

[Avnger]

My advice - which may or may not be useful to you - is this... mobility. Nobody loves playing a character that wears heavy armor and walks around built like a brick shit house than me. But for these bosses, if you haven't already done so, I suggest bumping that Adaptability stat up to where you have 12-14 I-frames (Agility 99, 105, or 111 are the breakpoints). And get your equip load under 50%. Effective rolling is key.

Fume Knight and Blue Smelter Demon say hello! xD

Oh @Xprimentyl when you fight Sinh the Sulmbering Dragon, broken Santier's Spear is a god-send if you can weild it.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Ok, this damn game has officially grown on me. Earlier in this thread, I compared Dark Souls 2 (as a sequel) to an ?overly-enthusiastic and painful handjob from a creepily-obsessive ex-girlfriend I immediately regretted drunk texting,? and while that sentiment remains true at times, I can add that ?she?s? just trying her best and only wants to make me happy; I?ve asked her to stop the jack-rabbiting and just cuddle with me.

Came to this conclusion when I finally made it through Drangleic Castle and opened the doors to King?s Passage, an incredibly atmospheric (if short) area topped off with an amazing boss fight with the Looking Glass Knight. That led to the Shrine of Amana and another incredible-looking and creepy boss with the Demon of Song. Solo?d Velstadt today and now with the King?s Ring, there are even more doors to open and more areas to explore; I?m genuinely excited. DS2 really does offer a LOT if you don?t hold the lack of coherence against it; really makes me wonder how great a game it could have been with the same direction and leadership that DS1, DS3 and BB enjoyed. I?m seriously considering NG+ now.

That being said, the DLC has me worried. Don?t know which is which, but one I teleport to from behind The Rotten?s room and the other from the Shrine of Winter, and both shut me down pretty hard. Considering how DS1?s DLC took its opportunity to throw the hardest bosses of the game at me, I?m really concerned that DS2?s? ?enthusiasm? ?for difficulty might be similarly amplified in its DLC, i.e.: 6 Super Ornsteins in a room the size of the Capra Demon?s, filled with poison water, and when they get to 50% health, 10 Gargoyles and a Dragonrider drop in because ZOMFG ISN?T THIS SUPER FUCKING HARD, BRO?? GIT GUD CUZ AWESOME!!! Yeah, as much as I?m warming up to the idea of DS2 ?staying the night,? if ?she? tries to force a double-fisted prostate massage on me, I?m more than willing to kick this schizo-***** out?

People can be overly dramatic, especially with a series like this. There is nothing in DS2 or any of its DLC that I found ridiculously unfair or unmanageable. A couple of gauntlet-like areas came close

Spoiler

and they are both from the Crown of the Iron King

, but the game is specifically designed to reward perseverance when all else fails. The rest of it is classic Souls, where patience, planning and some keen observation will save the day.

That last point is why I'd personally list Crown of the Sunken King as my favorite from a design standpoint. I loved Iron King's for its bosses and Ivory King's for its uniquely frigid setting and lore tie-in's, but there was something personally charming about Sunken King's setting that seemed to more greatly channel what Souls is about to me: that not quite quiet yet unnerving, intriguingly dark, somewhat obtuse atmosphere that keeps you on your toes. It also has some of the better shortcuts in the game.

Anyways, good to hear you're warming up to it. There is still much more to it even in the main game that may give you fond memories (key word there, especially for leveling opportunities in one particular instance).

 

[Dalisclock]

That being said, the DLC has me worried. Don?t know which is which, but one I teleport to from behind The Rotten?s room and the other from the Shrine of Winter, and both shut me down pretty hard. Considering how DS1?s DLC took its opportunity to throw the hardest bosses of the game at me, I?m really concerned that DS2?s? ?enthusiasm? ?for difficulty might be similarly amplified in its DLC, i.e.: 6 Super Ornsteins in a room the size of the Capra Demon?s, filled with poison water, and when they get to 50% health, 10 Gargoyles and a Dragonrider drop in because ZOMFG ISN?T THIS SUPER FUCKING HARD, BRO?? GIT GUD CUZ AWESOME!!! Yeah, as much as I?m warming up to the idea of DS2 ?staying the night,? if ?she? tries to force a double-fisted prostate massage on me, I?m more than willing to kick this schizo-***** out?

The DLC is harder, no doubt, but I found them so well put together I was more then happy to keep going, even if most of the bosses wiped the floor with me over and over again. Particularly loved Brume tower in the Iron King DLC, starting at the top of the tower and working my way all the way to the bottom. If you're near the end of the game(which it sounds like you are), you're probably ready to go tackle those.

Though some of the hardest bosses are strictly optional. Each area has an area which requires you to run a gauntlet through a side area and at the end is a very tough boss. Apparently you don't get anything special from beating it other then the satisfaction for doing so.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

^^satisfaction and crafting unique gear from their souls if one chooses to do so.

 

[Kerg3927]

Oh @Xprimentyl when you fight Sinh the Sulmbering Dragon, broken Santier's Spear is a god-send if you can weild it.

Or you can use Repair Powder during the fight. You can buy it from Chancellor Wellager in Drangleic Castle.

 

[Dalisclock]

At the end of the day these are games, and I try not to think into them too much as futile as it may be. Or, toss a few grains of salt on all the "wtf's" and force out a good chuckle. Or, if my curiosity and thirst for logic and reason still hasn't been satiated, I'll turn to google in hopes of finding something like this [https://fextralife.com/iron-keep-a-castle-in-the-right-spot/] which might put my mind at relative ease.

I'm actually very interested in this kind of growing revisionist sentiment towards DS2's level design, because I think intentional or not it does have an interesting effect. I described the game as having a dreamlike quality earlier, and I stand by that. Dranglaic, unlike Lordran, doesn't really feel like a real place, and I think while it's easy to understand the backlash to that there's a value in it, accidental or not.

I mean, did you notice that Bloodborne's old hunters DLC actually did the same thing? You climb up a clocktower, walk out and suddenly you're in the fishing hamlet. If this was a real, contiguous space, the research hall and the hunters nightmare would be underwater, but we know it isn't real space. Noone complained about this because they understood immediately that they were in a place where physical laws didn't always apply. The problem with the Earthen peak elevator isn't that it doesn't make sense, it's that it doesn't make so little sense that the player cottons on immediately that it isn't supposed to.

Ironic you should say that because in BB if you look into the water at the start of the fishing village you can actually see Yarnham below the surface. You can also see the wrecks ships from the finishing village from the Nightmare Frontier if you look in the right place.

I've read that article before and while I really don't think it was intentional(It feels more like they ran out of time and started stitching the working parts together), you're right it does create a weird dreamlike quality. It is worth mentioning that Drangleic is a place you entered by throwing yourself into a magical whirlpool because a creepy old lady told you to.

And then there's the weird theory that Drangleic is lordran but centuries or millennia down the road(depending on how many cycles), which is supported by a few rather vague points(supposedly the lost Bastille is the undead asylum from DS1, despite being out in the ocean and looking nothing like it) and completely falls apart when you realize that none of the geography matches up.

To me I always felt like Drangleic in Dark Souls 2 is supposed to be a whole kingdom, and every area transition is actually you walking for days to reach the next area. That's why some of the transitions don't really make sense, because they aren't actually back to back but are supposed to be days apart. Your character is starting to succumb to the undead curse, their memory is lapsing, they're forgetting how they got to the next area and how much time it took.

See, as cool as the world of Dark Souls 1 is with all of its inter-connectivity, it's never really made sense to me. You're telling me that all of Lordran is roughly 2 square miles? The entirety of the history of this world took place in areas separated by 800 meters of straight running? Izalith was abandoned because of a demon infestation and they decided to build the Undead Burg 100 feet away? The scale is just too small. You learn the world very intimately, and I appreciated that, but at the same time it makes the world feel tiny.

For all of its problems at least the world of Dark Souls 2 feels much bigger. It feels like you're traversing a country rather than just running over the same spots over and over.

After watching some of the new Vaati videos, it did stir some thoughts about DS2. While I haven't gotten to DS3 yet, I know that there's an ongoing theme of contraction and that as the world comes to it's final end, time and space become even more warped, causing numerous kingdoms which shouldn't be anywhere near each other(in space or time) to compress and slide into each other(leading to the Dreg Heap and the Ringed City).

With that in mind, the wierdass world layout in DS2 actually makes a bit more sense. Especially since one could argue that not only are these locations obviously nowhere near each other, but some of them probably shouldn't exist anymore. It's all supposed to be the kingdom of drangleic but then you come to areas like the Iron Keep which feels like a separate kingdom that should have been long conquered by Vendrick. Almost like it belongs to the past rather then the present. That's not even getting into the DLC areas which feel even more bizarre in comparison to the main game as far as how they connect to drangleic.

The intro movie seems to hint that this might be possible, both with the implication Drangleic has long since fallen to ruin("Long ago in the North...") and the fact you enter it through a magical whirlpool in some really wierdass ruins(The reflection the lake shows a building in it's prime, as opposed to the ruins it's reflecting). At least, that's my guess considering the intro movie is as clear as mud as far as worldbuilding goes.

As opposed to DS1, where the "Time is convoluted in Lordran" seems to justify game mechanics like summoning and spawning then being expressed in the game world(barring the possibility of turning off the sun in Anor Londo but the rest of the game world is unaffected).

 

[Kerg3927]

At the end of the day these are games, and I try not to think into them too much as futile as it may be. Or, toss a few grains of salt on all the "wtf's" and force out a good chuckle. Or, if my curiosity and thirst for logic and reason still hasn't been satiated, I'll turn to google in hopes of finding something like this [https://fextralife.com/iron-keep-a-castle-in-the-right-spot/] which might put my mind at relative ease.

I'm actually very interested in this kind of growing revisionist sentiment towards DS2's level design, because I think intentional or not it does have an interesting effect. I described the game as having a dreamlike quality earlier, and I stand by that. Dranglaic, unlike Lordran, doesn't really feel like a real place, and I think while it's easy to understand the backlash to that there's a value in it, accidental or not.

I mean, did you notice that Bloodborne's old hunters DLC actually did the same thing? You climb up a clocktower, walk out and suddenly you're in the fishing hamlet. If this was a real, contiguous space, the research hall and the hunters nightmare would be underwater, but we know it isn't real space. Noone complained about this because they understood immediately that they were in a place where physical laws didn't always apply. The problem with the Earthen peak elevator isn't that it doesn't make sense, it's that it doesn't make so little sense that the player cottons on immediately that it isn't supposed to.

Ironic you should say that because in BB if you look into the water at the start of the fishing village you can actually see Yarnham below the surface. You can also see the wrecks ships from the finishing village from the Nightmare Frontier if you look in the right place.

I've read that article before and while I really don't think it was intentional(It feels more like they ran out of time and started stitching the working parts together), you're right it does create a weird dreamlike quality. It is worth mentioning that Drangleic is a place you entered by throwing yourself into a magical whirlpool because a creepy old lady told you to.

And then there's the weird theory that Drangleic is lordran but centuries or millennia down the road(depending on how many cycles), which is supported by a few rather vague points(supposedly the lost Bastille is the undead asylum from DS1, despite being out in the ocean and looking nothing like it) and completely falls apart when you realize that none of the geography matches up.

To me I always felt like Drangleic in Dark Souls 2 is supposed to be a whole kingdom, and every area transition is actually you walking for days to reach the next area. That's why some of the transitions don't really make sense, because they aren't actually back to back but are supposed to be days apart. Your character is starting to succumb to the undead curse, their memory is lapsing, they're forgetting how they got to the next area and how much time it took.

See, as cool as the world of Dark Souls 1 is with all of its inter-connectivity, it's never really made sense to me. You're telling me that all of Lordran is roughly 2 square miles? The entirety of the history of this world took place in areas separated by 800 meters of straight running? Izalith was abandoned because of a demon infestation and they decided to build the Undead Burg 100 feet away? The scale is just too small. You learn the world very intimately, and I appreciated that, but at the same time it makes the world feel tiny.

For all of its problems at least the world of Dark Souls 2 feels much bigger. It feels like you're traversing a country rather than just running over the same spots over and over.

After watching some of the new Vaati videos, it did stir some thoughts about DS2. While I haven't gotten to DS3 yet, I know that there's an ongoing theme of contraction and that as the world comes to it's final end, time and space become even more warped, causing numerous kingdoms which shouldn't be anywhere near each other(in space or time) to compress and slide into each other(leading to the Dreg Heap and the Ringed City).

With that in mind, the wierdass world layout in DS2 actually makes a bit more sense. Especially since one could argue that not only are these locations obviously nowhere near each other, but some of them probably shouldn't exist anymore. It's all supposed to be the kingdom of drangleic but then you come to areas like the Iron Keep which feels like a separate kingdom that should have been long conquered by Vendrick. Almost like it belongs to the past rather then the present. That's not even getting into the DLC areas which feel even more bizarre in comparison to the main game as far as how they connect to drangleic.

The intro movie seems to hint that this might be possible, both with the implication Drangleic has long since fallen to ruin("Long ago in the North...") and the fact you enter it through a magical whirlpool in some really wierdass ruins(The reflection the lake shows a building in it's prime, as opposed to the ruins it's reflecting). At least, that's my guess considering the intro movie is as clear as mud as far as worldbuilding goes.

As opposed to DS1, where the "Time is convoluted in Lordran" seems to justify game mechanics like summoning and spawning then being expressed in the game world(barring the possibility of turning off the sun in Anor Londo but the rest of the game world is unaffected).

Makes sense to me in an abstract sort of way. Spacetime is curving in upon itself at the end of the world, or something like that. Meanwhile, there are multiple universes, and the fabric between those universes is thin, which allows you to see the messages on the ground, written by other people who are embarking upon a quest similar to yours in an alternate universe. The ghost images of those other people. Etc. It all jibes with the lore of the world, IMO.

As far as Dirty Hipsters' comment about DS1 feeling tiny... that is a great thing, IMO. Large open worlds may make more sense in comparison to the real world, but they lead to a crappy video game experience. Say there is a game set in Kansas. The realistic thing to do is to make it where I can access the entire state of Kansas by just walking around. But why would I want to walk around the entire state of Kansas and explore it? Most of it is uninteresting. A smaller world full of interesting stuff is better than large world full of uninteresting stuff. Confinement in video games is a wonderful thing. Do not wonder why you can't see what's on the other side of that hill, or why you can't jump over that 3 foot rock... just assume that there is nothing interesting over there and thank the developer for protecting you from the boredom of exploring it.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

At the end of the day these are games, and I try not to think into them too much as futile as it may be. Or, toss a few grains of salt on all the "wtf's" and force out a good chuckle. Or, if my curiosity and thirst for logic and reason still hasn't been satiated, I'll turn to google in hopes of finding something like this [https://fextralife.com/iron-keep-a-castle-in-the-right-spot/] which might put my mind at relative ease.

I'm actually very interested in this kind of growing revisionist sentiment towards DS2's level design, because I think intentional or not it does have an interesting effect. I described the game as having a dreamlike quality earlier, and I stand by that. Dranglaic, unlike Lordran, doesn't really feel like a real place, and I think while it's easy to understand the backlash to that there's a value in it, accidental or not.

I mean, did you notice that Bloodborne's old hunters DLC actually did the same thing? You climb up a clocktower, walk out and suddenly you're in the fishing hamlet. If this was a real, contiguous space, the research hall and the hunters nightmare would be underwater, but we know it isn't real space. Noone complained about this because they understood immediately that they were in a place where physical laws didn't always apply. The problem with the Earthen peak elevator isn't that it doesn't make sense, it's that it doesn't make so little sense that the player cottons on immediately that it isn't supposed to.

Ironic you should say that because in BB if you look into the water at the start of the fishing village you can actually see Yarnham below the surface. You can also see the wrecks ships from the finishing village from the Nightmare Frontier if you look in the right place.

I've read that article before and while I really don't think it was intentional(It feels more like they ran out of time and started stitching the working parts together), you're right it does create a weird dreamlike quality. It is worth mentioning that Drangleic is a place you entered by throwing yourself into a magical whirlpool because a creepy old lady told you to.

And then there's the weird theory that Drangleic is lordran but centuries or millennia down the road(depending on how many cycles), which is supported by a few rather vague points(supposedly the lost Bastille is the undead asylum from DS1, despite being out in the ocean and looking nothing like it) and completely falls apart when you realize that none of the geography matches up.

To me I always felt like Drangleic in Dark Souls 2 is supposed to be a whole kingdom, and every area transition is actually you walking for days to reach the next area. That's why some of the transitions don't really make sense, because they aren't actually back to back but are supposed to be days apart. Your character is starting to succumb to the undead curse, their memory is lapsing, they're forgetting how they got to the next area and how much time it took.

See, as cool as the world of Dark Souls 1 is with all of its inter-connectivity, it's never really made sense to me. You're telling me that all of Lordran is roughly 2 square miles? The entirety of the history of this world took place in areas separated by 800 meters of straight running? Izalith was abandoned because of a demon infestation and they decided to build the Undead Burg 100 feet away? The scale is just too small. You learn the world very intimately, and I appreciated that, but at the same time it makes the world feel tiny.

For all of its problems at least the world of Dark Souls 2 feels much bigger. It feels like you're traversing a country rather than just running over the same spots over and over.

After watching some of the new Vaati videos, it did stir some thoughts about DS2. While I haven't gotten to DS3 yet, I know that there's an ongoing theme of contraction and that as the world comes to it's final end, time and space become even more warped, causing numerous kingdoms which shouldn't be anywhere near each other(in space or time) to compress and slide into each other(leading to the Dreg Heap and the Ringed City).

With that in mind, the wierdass world layout in DS2 actually makes a bit more sense. Especially since one could argue that not only are these locations obviously nowhere near each other, but some of them probably shouldn't exist anymore. It's all supposed to be the kingdom of drangleic but then you come to areas like the Iron Keep which feels like a separate kingdom that should have been long conquered by Vendrick. Almost like it belongs to the past rather then the present. That's not even getting into the DLC areas which feel even more bizarre in comparison to the main game as far as how they connect to drangleic.

The intro movie seems to hint that this might be possible, both with the implication Drangleic has long since fallen to ruin("Long ago in the North...") and the fact you enter it through a magical whirlpool in some really wierdass ruins(The reflection the lake shows a building in it's prime, as opposed to the ruins it's reflecting). At least, that's my guess considering the intro movie is as clear as mud as far as worldbuilding goes.

As opposed to DS1, where the "Time is convoluted in Lordran" seems to justify game mechanics like summoning and spawning then being expressed in the game world(barring the possibility of turning off the sun in Anor Londo but the rest of the game world is unaffected).

Makes sense to me in an abstract sort of way. Spacetime is curving in upon itself at the end of the world, or something like that. Meanwhile, there are multiple universes, and the fabric between those universes is thin, which allows you to see the messages on the ground, written by other people who are embarking upon a quest similar to yours in an alternate universe. The ghost images of those other people. Etc. It all jibes with the lore of the world, IMO.

As far as Dirty Hipsters' comment about DS1 feeling tiny... that is a great thing, IMO. Large open worlds may make more sense in comparison to the real world, but they lead to a crappy video game experience. Say there is a game set in Kansas. The realistic thing to do is to make it where I can access the entire state of Kansas by just walking around. But why would I want to walk around the entire state of Kansas and explore it? Most of it is uninteresting. A smaller world full of interesting stuff is better than large world full of uninteresting stuff. Confinement in video games is a wonderful thing. Do not wonder why you can't see what's on the other side of that hill, or why you can't jump over that 3 foot rock... just assume that there is nothing interesting over there and thank the developer for protecting you from the boredom of exploring it.

Hehe, are you sure this isn't just an aversion to large worlds knowing the completionist in you would need to spend that much more time scouring every nook and cranny?

Anyways, I can agree with this general sentiment, but I also sometimes love trying to push the limits of the intended level design. It's especially interesting in more linear games, finding secret navigable areas the developers never meant for players to reach. There is a Youtube series by Shesez [https://www.youtube.com/user/PencakeAndWuffle/featured] called Boundary Break that has some interesting stuff.

 

[Dalisclock]

As far as Dirty Hipsters' comment about DS1 feeling tiny... that is a great thing, IMO. Large open worlds may make more sense in comparison to the real world, but they lead to a crappy video game experience. Say there is a game set in Kansas. The realistic thing to do is to make it where I can access the entire state of Kansas by just walking around. But why would I want to walk around the entire state of Kansas and explore it? Most of it is uninteresting. A smaller world full of interesting stuff is better than large world full of uninteresting stuff. Confinement in video games is a wonderful thing. Do not wonder why you can't see what's on the other side of that hill, or why you can't jump over that 3 foot rock... just assume that there is nothing interesting over there and thank the developer for protecting you from the boredom of exploring it.

DS1 felt like the perfect size for a gameworld. Large, varied and windy enough that you can spend a long time exploring and finding new and interesting things, but small enough you get traverse the gameworld(once the doors and shortcuts are unlocked) without getting bored. Sure, you can't explore most of the City of Anor londo(despite how huge it is) and can't even see a way to get down to it, but what you can explore is more then enough.

Though I will nitpick the incredibly obvious invisible wall in DS2, the collapsed gate near the shrine of winter that prevents you from reaching the castle without opening the shrine. It looks like any reasonably fit human could climb over that rubble but for the games purposes, it's treated as a wall, even though it really looks like a shortcut.