From what I heard, before a patch you actually had to fight some of the giant dogs in Lost Izalith. Now you can easily run to the Bed of Chaos gate without fighting anything.

I agree in part with you guys. Seath is a super easy boss (one of the easiest in the game, and I doubt it was intended that way). Bed of Chaos is obv lame. Four Kings is legit, Nito is ok. When compared to what came before it, the levels are pretty meh, outside of probably the Archives.

I think the DLC fills a lot of the void that the post Anor Londo stuff did not (at least with the bosses).

The best enemies are the halberd giants in Anor Londo.

Wow at the bandit knife riposte animation for lautrec. It's unique

Finished off the DLC and my second play through. DLC was very good but too short how much did it cost originally ? I would have been unhappy if I'd paid more then £5.
Kalameet and manus where kicking my arse so I went and got Logan's stuff from the archives. His wand is a bit overpowered I blasted through the game after getting it no more then 3 tries at any boss, Nito and Gywn first try.

Been stepping up my DS game. Long time fan now, but for some reason never thought to buy the DLC until this week. I know, I'm ******ed. Anyways, I'm having a great time. Paid the full $15 or whatever, but I don't care, this game is like top 3 all time for me so I'll pay whatever.

I've also been really getting into the lore. Watching a bunch of those EpicNameBro lore videos and reading a bit of the wiki-type stuff. Anyone else interested in this? Any good recommended reading (or watching, outside of the ENB stuff)?

I would recomend these:

Vageta311 that mainly does challenge runs and is ridic skilled.
http://www.youtube.com/user/vageta311

HellkiteDrake for awesome remixed Dark souls music
http://www.youtube.com/user/HellkiteDrake

Vaatividya for all things Dark souls
http://www.youtube.com/user/VaatiVidya

Rurikhan for playthroughs and news
http://www.youtube.com/user/Rurikain

Second to this. It's pretty amazing how enjoyable it was to watch all his videos. Basically takes all known lore stuff and fills in bits here and there pretty seamlessly with things that make the most logical sense.

I liked his view on Solaire, Velka, and especially Siegmund.

Can anyone recommend a good beginner hints and tips article? I don't have the time to sit through a LP series to figure things out! And I'm not finding much immediately useful to me on the wikis.

This game is amazing already though, defeating the big dragon dude at the beginning took me a bit but you feel pretty badass, and he's probably super easy. The DSfix patch and upping my res to 2560x1600 and setting all the aa stuff makes it look pretty damn good, I was almost ready to chuck the game after loading it the first time. How lazy are the devs to not roll that fix into a patch?

The ds wiki page wasn't helpful????

Wow I just killed Kalameet on my first try.

ETA: wtf is the point of htis calamity ring?

Manus on my first try as well. But that fight was mad tough. Used all my estus and like 6 humanity.

Calamity ring is made to make it even harder.

Taking double damage and locking up a ring slot makes for a good challenge.

Vageta311 Calamity challenge run
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...JzHfm7BHDdVudR

Haven't posted itt in a while... I still play dark souls pretty much every day. It's one of the few games I consistently keep playing

It's genuinely a phenomenal game. Even when i'm not playing it I find myself on the character planner making new builds for PVP...

Any PVPers itt?

Got it on the Steam Sale, should I use a controller instead of mouse/keyboard?

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dark_So..._Edition#Mouse

Seems like it might still be a bit iffy, definitely a controller game if you have one.

Thanks. I've got a PS3, it sounds like I'm best off using that.

Speedrun attempt 2: 6:53:45 including 2 ****ing hours on Gwyn.

4:46:24

Struggled a bit in the early game, had a few deaths that were borderline inexcusable. I still engage too many enemies prob, especially in the early game. I could prob do a Sub 4 hour run with no glitches and beating all bosses imo.

Bandit knife took down O&S, but i had to semi-cheat and get help from Solaire. Kinda feel bad but this thing is still pretty intense. Took about 25 efforts, 10 or so with solaire. Killed smough first and used soul arrows on big Ornstein.

Played through New Londo. Ghosts killed me one time when I got stunlocked in a room, I have 0 poise and have to run right up nose to nose and hit each ghost 3x. Not too bad. Also got killed once by a darkwraith when i mistimed a parry and took a one-two combo that killed me from almost full health. Decided I wanted to upgrade my bandit knife +10 higher before 4 kings. Upgraded it to +13, and then decided i didn't want to fight 4 kings :-)

Killed Demon Firesage and Centipede Demon. Did you know Centipede Demon grows his tail back?!? These kind of things matter when i takes like 150 strikes to kill a boss. He does bleed though which helped a bunch.

JTM, did you get the Wolf Ring? I can see your best setup being Favor & Protection/Hornet Ring for normal fights then sub out Hornet for Wolf for boss fights. The free 40 poise is huge.

Yeah, i have the wolf ring. Used it a bit. Mostly now i use the hornet ring if i'm fighting something that can be parried. I mostly use the ring of steel protection otherwise. The target shield and black leather armor really sucks.

I'm not having any luck searching about this, but is there a way to play this without having GFWL installed after the first time launching it? I can logout of GFWL and play offline, but when I uninstall GFWL the game won't even launch from Steam, just opens the Steam popup saying it's launching and then nothing happens, and I have to reinstall GFWL. And if GFWL is installed it automatically reconnects and I have to go offline again manually, and then my saved games disappear and I have to start over. It sounds like people are being able to play offline, but is that only the case if there's no internet connection? I tried blocking GFWLClient and GFWLive programs from my firewall, but apparently I have no idea what I'm doing because it still is able to connect.

Kind of figured it out, had to have the DS launcher program (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition\DATA.exe) blocked in my outgoing rules. It still brings up GFWL but starts in offline mode and my saved games are there. For some reason I still can't figure out how to block GFWL from communicating through the Windows Firewall, have both the client and the store blocked in incoming and outgoing for all profiles, so it must be using something else or another windows firewall rule is overriding mine? Times like this I wish I had the patience to actually sit down and learn more about networking, maybe set up openwrt or tomato on my router - anyone know a good starting point?

Need a little weapon help. I was using the Drake Sword but I'm about to enter Sen's Castle(?) and it was starting to feel a bit weak, the next best weapon I had I think was my Gargoyle Halbard so I took it to +8 and it seems to be hitting really hard two-handed, and about the same as the Drake or maybe a little better with a wider arc but slower speed one-handed. Is there any kind of penalty for having your shield equipped on your back while two-handing, and do the defensive stats of the weapon equate to the defensive stats of a shield when blocking two-handed, or is there some other hidden math going on? Also, it has a D scale for both str and dex, should I be trying to keep str and dex equal or is it ok to pump str in case I want another weapon that will most likely scale with just str?

One last one, I'm still trying to figure out the ascension thing, if I get a very large ember I can take a +10 to +11 and up? Or I get it to +10 then I can take it down fire/lightning/divine etc? What's the best play here with a weapon like the halberd at midgame?

^^^

Gargoyle Halberd is an awesome weapon, it'll easily carry you through the endgame. I think you'd be OK with just levelling strength if you want to keep options open for later. D scaling is pretty poor, so you won't get much of a damage increase as you level your character anyway, the real gains will come from upgrading the weapon.

You are correct about the Very Large Ember, and it's definitely the route you should go. That Halberd will be a beast at +15 and you can always use resin for fire/lightning resin buffs. To make lightning weapons, you need the blacksmith in Anor Londo, for Fire (which is available from +5 btw, not +10) you need the catacomb blacksmith. I wouldn't bother with Divine unless you're making a faith build.

No penalty to having your shield on your back, and any effects it bestows (like the stamina regen of the Grass Crest Shield) still work, and yes, the defensive stats of a weapon work like you assumed.