Said on my 1st playthrough i wouldn't go near any wikis but now I've been on the dark souls wiki and reading all about the covenants.

Just joined the Darkmoon one (didn't even know it existed first time round) and I'm doing a bit of pvp, collected 3 thingies from the guilty and I need 10 to get new items.

This game really gets better and better as you put in more time.

I haven't even finished my first playthrough yet and I'm north of 70 hours put in. I just keep finding new things to do. I've been on a major clean-up tear today. Going back though places I already cleared an getting items I've missed. A lot of rings can be found this way and I'd bypassed some really nice ones like the Covetous Silver Ring and the Ring that makes you inaudible.

Now I'm upgrading all to all the boss weapons and trying to finish up my Pharis Bow +15 (stupid large chunks). I only have Seath and Gwyn left to beat. I'm sure I'll get to that...eventually.

Got my moonlight butterfly horn. Functions like a spear and actually does pure magic damage as opposed to physical.
Means you can bypass shield defences. Fairly awesome.

Also, there seems to be some incredibly cheap muppets in pvp. I'm getting backstabbed constantly even though they're nowhere near getting behind me. Are they exploiting some sort of glitch? They backstab I get up and insta-backstab me again.
They also summon their buddies to fight me! I'm not invading just anyone just the guilty on behalf of the Darkmoon covenant!

Magic damage doesn't bypass shields, but most shields do not have as high of a damage magic damage reduction as they do physical. When you invade people through any means, people will often look to summon phantoms if they see any white/gold signs. They also might just be trying to fight the boss of the area with help. As far as getting back stabbed a lot, people are just good at it, then if you add in a bit of lag it can seem pretty unfair at times.

This is basically the answer to LOL's question. Lag is a real PvP killer. It's always fun to be backing away from a player only to still be being hit by the attack they made a few seconds ago.

So what is everyone's preference for Ring setups and covenants?

I ended up making a mistake and equipping the Ring of Favor and Protection so that's got to stay on now. I usually wear either the Wolf Ring (increases poise) or the Ring that lesses Physical damage. Serpent ring when grinding LDO

As for covenants...I'm not in one. I kept thinking I'd join one eventually, but never got around to it. I honestly have no idea what is best for a Ranged based non-magic/faith user. Any thoughts/stories?

I'm actually going trophy hunting and thus must join a lot of different covernants. For example for the collect all miracles trophy I need to get to rank 1 in the Darkmoon blades cov by invading guilty players and collecting reprisal trinkets. I need 10 and have 9 right now. So when I get the ten I'll join another. I have no interest in getting into pvp proper as I have too much other stuff to be doing to get good at it.

As for rings I leave the ring of F&P(might take it off as I now have two and I'm not sure if health and stam bonus scaled with level) on and variously equip poise, hornets, flame resist etc depending ont he situation.

I didn't even know the +exp ring existed until you mentioned it so I had a look on youtube and it's down the tomb of the giants so I'll get that next.

Yeah, picked it up on my recent "get everything I missed" trip.

Covenants are more of a way to change how you interact with the online world than they are about PvE play style. There are however some important covenants for faith users. If you join the sun bros you get access to 3 offensive spear miracles. The last one requires a 50 faith and the end boss soul though. Gravelord servants give you a cool sword that does toxic damage as well as 2 AoE damage spells similar to WoG, but longer cast time and higher radius. The covenant that big tits runs gives you some healing miracles, although I think you can get those in Duke's Archive as well. Darkwraith, Forest Hunter, & Dark Moon are the best for PvP. Chaos Servants give you some new pyromancies, dragon covenant turns you into a dragon.

Re: wolf ring, you only really need it if you're about to fight something that's going to knock you around and aren't wearing armor that gives good poise like the Taurus Demons.

Totally should've written my part better. Non-Magic/Non-Faith user. And yeah, when I took a look at all of them the only thing I saw was that most give a rare Miracle or Spell so I pretty much overlooked them.


Golden-Hemmed robes ftw. The ring is the only poise-giving item I have but it's 40 is enough to keep me from getting banged around much.

I'm not sure if that last bit is meant to be a question or a statement, but there really isn't that much need for poise in most PvE scenarios. I would just leave it off and throw it on if you find yourself getting stunned or knocked off balance. Also something I forgot to mention is the sun bros and big tits covenants help you get matched up easier for summonings and also make your summoning symbol gold.

Darkwraith ftw obv! But only because I want to get the armor and sword (does good dmg with 40 humanity). But easily the best way to get pvp action. Although you can still just sit down in kiln human and wait for invaders. Tried gravelord covenant for a while but theres just no action. They did a good job with 1.05 I think regarding online stuff, a lot more pvp and coop works now. Helped a lot people with gwyn for souls and fun. Lol if you fight gwyn with 3+ people hes actually completely bugged, the only thing he does is jump around and switch targets constantly. Fun actually is back now that they fixed dragon head glitch and you have to care for your souls again.

Only encounter I can think of is bed of chaos, if you got no poise there this thing will almost always push you off at some ring during the fight.

Really happy to see how much this game is getting mentioned among people I wouldnt have thought would bat an eye at it. Think the whole "mainstreaming" of porting it to 360 is great and if anything will just give us more of it and extend the franchise past what we thought possible. DS DS DS DS!

It would be nice if Dark Souls could somehow beat Skyrim to GOTY. It's not going to happen but it would be cool if critics would choose to recognise devs that don't do the same damn thing over and over again (and that's not just a reference to Skyrim).