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So, I'm finally getting around to playing BB for the first time, played god knows how many hours of DeS, DaS, and DS2. I'm loving the faster-paced combat, but I'm really stuck at the first boss. Sometimes shooting its head staggers it for a visceral attack, but other times it seems to do nothing even when I'm fairly certain I've hit the head. What is it that I'm missing? I've run out of healing items so aside from the 1~3 I find on the walk in, I'm kind of running ragged. I've gotten it down to about 25% health a handful of times, but I just can't keep up the damage - being able to more reliably get the counter attacks would be a huge help.
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Apr 13, 2016 06:10
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Kewpuh posted:there's a couple different guys you could be fighting as the first boss? gascoigne or cleric beast? i'm assuming cleric beast in which case you shouldnt even really bother with shooting him. dont lock on, dodge roll his big telegraphed attacks and punch him in the rear end over and over. you could also throw an oil urn at him and follow it up with a molotov for quite a bit of damage. Yeah, Cleric Beast. I assumed that staggering it was the "trick" to the fight since there's a pickup for like a dozen bullets in its battle arena. I figured that was the developers trying to hint at an easy(ish) way to beat the boss - like the archers on the tower in the original Dark Souls. Anyways, thanks for the help! I'll just have to buckle down and get good. Not using the lock on has been a big help - I'm definitely not used to the sidestep dodge yet, and keep using it way too early thinking it has the same timing as the old dodge roll.
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Apr 13, 2016 16:47
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I'm on my first play through and just started getting items that require arcane and use quicksilver bullets. Are they worth spending some levels on arcane for?
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Apr 25, 2016 05:13
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Mr Dog posted:Lack of build diversity is really bad in DS3 right now, it's literally Straight Sword Or GTFO To be fair, I just got to Burgenworth for the first time, and with a Skill-based build I've not yet found a single skill-scaling weapon since the Threaded Cane I picked at the very start. The Saw Spear has kind of worked as another skill weapon, but at 30 skill the cane beats it out. Meanwhile I've found quite a few strength-based weapons that all look super cool and unique but are pretty much worthless to me (if I can even use them).
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Apr 26, 2016 00:14
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I’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking about the Blood Vials from a game design perspective, and while I wasn’t happy with the system at first, overall I think I’m happy with it. It has problems, but those problems are actually in the game’s level design, NOT with the Blood Vial system itself. Switching from Healing Grass to Estus Flasks from DeS to DaS I think was a means of reducing grinding and having more fine control over the player’s available healing items. Players got a means of controlling their difficulty (upgrading estus if needed), designers got more fine control over the difficulty of any given area (as they can get a rough estimate of how many flasks the player is likely to have), and it avoids any and all grinding for healing items. So why change it to a mix of the two systems? Let’s think about why they made this change, and what it effects. The obvious initial answer is that they made Vials limited so that players would be more encouraged to use the Regain system, thus encouraging more overall aggression. However, I wasn’t super happy with this conclusion - if there were Estus Flasks, From could have limited them to 4-5 max at a time. Such limited quantities would also encourage the use of the Regain system, as the player wouldn’t have enough to rely on them completely through any given area or boss. The next thing I could see the Blood Vial system encouraging is for people to GIT GUD. But then I thought more about it, and a limited Estus system could accomplish the same thing - if you don’t git gud, you’d always run out of flasks almost immediately in a boss fight. The last obvious one is that it punishes players who don’t git gud with grinding, or encourages grinding. However, grinding hasn’t been a super big part of the Souls games in the past and doesn’t fit with their overall game design philosophy. However, there’s one subtle thing that the Vial system encourages. It took me a while to realize it, but I think this is a way for the developers to try to get player to fight enemies on their way to bosses they are having difficulty with. In Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, it’s basically always a good idea to just run past all enemies in between the start of an area and the boss after you’ve fought the boss at least once. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it gives the players an opportunity to focus on the boss itself. But what about when a player is having trouble with a boss and dying a lot? That’s where the Vial system comes in. Let’s assume an area has enemies that drop Blood Vials with relative frequency. Player A is having difficulty with the area, and they’ll probably run out of Blood Vials - but since the enemies drop Vials, the player is encouraged to git gud so they can make up some of their stock of Vials. This could still be accomplished with Estus. Player B, meanwhile, is not having difficult with the area. They’ll start banking their Vials, which is a nice reward and can help them with later areas they might have difficulties with. This could not be accomplished with Estus. Fast-forward to the boss encounter for this hypothetical area. Let’s say Player A has difficulties with this boss. They’ll run out of vials quickly, since they couldn’t stock during the level, and thus will need to fight all the enemies on the way to get to the boss in order to get Vials. This will ensure that the player becomes decent at killing those enemies - if Player A simply runs past them, they’ll never learn to improve against those enemies, and while they may get better at the boss more quickly, it won’t do good for their overall skill at the game. Let’s say that instead Player A does not have trouble with the boss. Suddenly they now have a nice small stack of vials from not needing to use them, making the next level easier to get into - which is good for them, since they struggled with the last one. Now Player B encounters the boss. Say Player B is struggling with the boss and burning through the Blood Vials that they saved up. Because Player B has a stockpile of Vials, they can just run past the enemies they’ve already mastered and attempt the boss quickly over and over. But eventually Player B runs out of Vials and needs to fight the enemies on the way to the boss. An important thing happens here - Player B is forced to slow down. This is important for the pacing of the game. If a player is stuck on a boss, forcing them to fight some weaker enemies can give them a bit of a refreshing break. These enemies the player has already mastered won’t be a big problem, giving the player a nice little confidence boost, and they also give the player a chance to cool off from facing the boss so they don’t go on tilt and get frustrated. If the player burns through vials faster than the enemies drop them, then this cooldown period occurs more frequently to break up the pace, keeping things from getting too monotonous and frustrating. This is something that the Estus system did NOT encourage - with the estus system, you could slam your face into a spike wall for hours on end and make no progress, getting more and more frustrated. The vial system helps ensure that you stop and take a breather every now and then. As I mentioned waaaay at the top of this post, though, the problems come form level design. If there aren’t a few enemies that can reliably drop Vials in a level, suddenly all this poo poo goes out the window and it turns into Vials = grinding.
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Apr 26, 2016 22:00
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Paineopticon posted:While I appreciate the effortpost Codfish, I'm not sold. There's no incentive to fight annoying trash in, say, the Forbidden Forest when you could just go farm up some blood echoes in Hemwick and buy a bunch of vials. I would say that the incentive to fight the trash in Forbidden Forest should be that it refills on consumable items on the way to the boss. Whether or not that’s worth doing depends on the area - some areas nail it way better than others. AS for slowing down, I meant in regards to attempting the bosses. The devs probably want to encourage the players to take short breaks - not long enough to grind out blood echoes or vials, but enough to just fight dudes on the way to the boss to cool off a bit when on tilt. You can say “this is your fault learn to manage your emotions better”, but the developers definitely have a responsibility to avoid feelings of frustration in general. Farming for blood echoes isn’t super duper graceful game design, as just sitting and grinding isn’t particularly fun and doesn’t really help you feel any sense of progression (like killing enemies on the way to a boss might, in terms of practicing against the boss while also farming up items). I think this is an attempt at helping these issues. Whether or not it succeeds is another story entirely, though  Gammon posted:Edit - ^^^ gonna have to disagree with one of your points there buddy. Vial farming when I was stuck on Gascoigne made it so much more frustrating, because it slowed down my learning process on the boss fight. Imagine trying to learn to ride a bike, only each time you fall off you a) forget half of everything learned to that point and B) have to save for a new bike. I agree that grinding when you want to fight a boss is definitely frustrating - hence why I was saying that having enemies on the way to the boss that drop vials is the correct way for the game to handle the system. Obviously not every boss has these enemies, and I suspect those might be the more frustrating bosses. The path to Gascoigne has the fat guys, who will always drop like 2 vials. They’re a bit tricky to fight at that point, but learning to correctly fight them is a very vital skill for later in the game. Encouraging the player to fight them is the game’s way of making sure you’re skilled at it for later, more difficult enemies. It’s almost a tutorial, in this sense. If you go against this, though, it'll probably be even more frustrating.
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Apr 26, 2016 23:37
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What's the soft cap on stats in this game? I'm at 40 on skill and don't know if I should keep dumping into it
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Apr 28, 2016 03:47
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RyokoTK posted:It's different. Strength and skill begin to diminish at 25 and then hard cap at 50. Endurance hard caps at 40 and Arcane hard caps at 99. Ahh, didn't realize there were hard caps! Thanks for the info, I just assumed it worked like it did in Dark Souls.
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Apr 28, 2016 03:55
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Dark Souls 2 isn't as tightly designed as the first game or BB, but it's still a pretty good game. Not nearly as bad as the Internet likes to make it out to be, at least.
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Apr 28, 2016 04:52
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Gammon posted:So DS2 is any build you like as long as it's the only viable one? I mean, I might still get it but drat. I never played any DLC, but I went through DS2 probably 3-4 times, at least one of those being goofy dumb gimmicks, and never felt like I was making a "wrong" choice in any of them. For the base game, builds are pretty flexible.
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Apr 28, 2016 07:13
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Happy Hedonist posted:Having beat ng+ with my blades of mercy character I'm going to start a drunk kirkhammer run. I'm only going to play when I'm too drunk to play DS3, I'm still working my way through that one. I'm looking forward to getting started tonight. I have a bunch of scotch ale and some black label waiting for me at home. I’d been stuck on the three hunters in Hypogean Gaol after beating Rom, I couldn’t even down one of them let alone all three. Last night I downed a manhattan, then beat them first try. Drunkbourne is real.
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Apr 29, 2016 22:55
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I need some help with the DLC. I just bought it tonight, and everything was going great until I ran into the Bell-Axe Giant in the lake of blood, after the hunter around all the crows. I swear I've died more times against this guy than any other enemy in the game, bosses included. I beat the first giant in the church okay, but I think that's because he never went bell-mode. Before bell-mode I can deal with him just fine, but soon as he does it I almost always wind up getting destroyed immediately. I just can't dodge his attacks consistently because of the increased hitboxes, and as soon as one hits me he usually combos into another, and by that point I'm dead. I'd back off to poke at him with my Threaded Cane, but there just isn't enough room without getting blown up by the cannon giant. I'm running a skill build with Threaded Cane+9 and Blades of Mercy+9. Any tips? CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 06:01 on May 12, 2016 |
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May 12, 2016 05:58
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Digirat posted:Because you are very close to a lantern, just charge past them until you find it. Then you can go back and fight them at a position where you can open up with backstabs, and the run will have no enemies in the way instead of all the other enemies in the area. Oh poo poo, I never even tried backstabbing! I'll give it a shot, thanks! e: killed him first try Soon as he stopped to ring his bell I Auger'd him in the back then instagibbed him.
CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 06:13 on May 12, 2016 |
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May 12, 2016 06:06
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I'm surprised people seem to think Ludwig is more difficult than Maria - she's kicking my rear end WAY more times than he ever did. 
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May 17, 2016 04:57
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Since everybody's been posting videos of their first times taking down bosses, I just beat Maria after a lotta tries Very glad that I remembered you can press up on the d-pad.
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May 17, 2016 05:34
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Wow, Fishing Hamlet is the least fun area of the entire loving game. The flying skulls are obnoxious, as are the giant fish guys with multiple 1-hit kill attacks and shitloads of health. I was having a blast with the DLC up to this point. It's a shame cus I love the visual theming of the area and fishmen are always cool, but this is just so unforgiving it doesn't feel fun at all.
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May 18, 2016 06:38
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Some insane part of my brain won't let me pass by enemies. If it's there, I need to kill it at that point. Otherwise, I feel like I'm just avoiding the issue of I come back later or from an easier angle. This same insane part of my brain keeps me from using fire / bolt paper when I'm stuck on bosses.
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May 18, 2016 08:07
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Welp, finally beat OoK. Holy gently caress that was a hard fight. I can definitely see why a lot of people don't like it, I'm not a super huge fan. I don't see many people complain about this in regards to him, but his hitboxes seem...weird. Sometimes they extend slightly farther than you think they would, and since he jumps around so much sometimes you get caught on him while evading, which leads to you getting hit. He's also so mobile that it's difficult to use rally against him, and even when you can get some hits in he doesn't seem to stagger much. And, of course, it's hard to get practice against the second form, since he can kill you so quickly in it.
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May 20, 2016 03:26
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Friendly reminder that the game gives you a shield that blocks “non-physical” damage in the same level just before the Living Failures.
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Jun 6, 2016 19:50
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Digirat posted:Not really other than getting keys for locked doors. That's a weirdly isolated and totally unexplained case, I went through the whole game twice before I realized what made that door open Honestly, I assumed that I had accidentally missed that route the entire time. It wasn’t until I read about it online that I found out that it was closed and then later opened.
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Jun 7, 2016 19:30
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EC posted:I have a bunch of late game bolt gems in the pizza cutter and it loving owns on my 50 ARC. I shredded chalice Rom this weekend for a friend, despite being nerfed because of leveling differences. I just started an ARC build and was planning on saving Sawblade for my STR build, but now i’m not so sure.
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Jun 7, 2016 21:29
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To be fair, it probably only says that so players won't attempt to locate them elsewhere. This seems like an unfortunate case where game design might interfere with the storytelling.
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Jun 8, 2016 00:46
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Ever try the Monster Hunter games? They also have a robust yet simple combat system that requires mastery, difficult encounters that are satisfying to overcome, and a focus on player skill over statistical advantages.
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Jun 9, 2016 14:58
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In Training posted:It's in every souls players DNA to seize up at one hit left on the boss, even though usually absolutely nothing changes about the boss and the strategy that got you to 99% will definitely seal the deal but...human nature is a strange thing It’s for exactly this reason that I’ve tried to make it a habit to never look at boss health bars after they get to around 10-25% health left. Every time I do I think “Oh man, the boss is so low, I could probably burst them down really quick!” and then wow big surprise I fuckup and die.
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Jun 23, 2016 19:10
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I wanna start up a Stake Driver run because gently caress YEAH  Is pure strength the best option, or even strength and skill?
CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Aug 24, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 02:28
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Is the multiplayer in this still pretty active? Considering picking up PS+ finally, and this is a significant factor. Also, what's the standard PVP level, 120?
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Aug 24, 2016 17:26
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skasion posted:Not really. You can still get a couple hits in the Nightmares and Chalices, and you'll probably find a couple low level chances for co-op in Central/Old Yharnam. For most of the game though, I wouldn't expect much multiplayer that you don't go out of your way to find. There isn't really a standard level for PvP but if you hang out in Nightmare of Mensis most of the people you fight will be 100+. Any chance to reliably invade people, or only if i'm specifically hanging out for PVP?
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Aug 24, 2016 18:57
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Genius totally-not-terrible PVP build idea: Reiterpallasch with slow poison gems, and Cannon. If they stop to antidote the poison, or you get a parry with the Reiter, blow them the gently caress up 
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Aug 25, 2016 01:13
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Lore chat: what's up with the dream / nightmare lands, anyways? Are they like, pocket dimensions that great ones have made that house people's consciousness or something? Like the Hunter's dream is there because the moon presence wants a hunter to kill other great ones, I think? That's why it keeps dragging your consciousness back into it when you die, and giving you new bodies. So then when you kill Mergo, Gehrman is like "okay your job is done, you can go now" because he's trapped there by the moon presence? And like the nightmare scape that you kill Mergo in is one that Mergo made, and trapped Micolash and all the students in? Like you see their corpses because their consciousnesses have been trapped. Then the Hunter's nightmare is hosted by Kos('s orphan). I think?
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Aug 27, 2016 03:49
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Fighting vicar Amelia at level 20 wasn't the wisest choice, but gently caress of it isn't super fun
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Oct 4, 2016 04:02
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Rangpur posted:I have no idea if this is the one you meant, but I've tried the first half of it myself and it works out well enough. Basically just rush a +6 saw spear with a bunch of fire gems in it to carry you through the early game until you start getting access to the really good Arc-scaling weapons & tools. Or just keep the saw spear, even, since it never stops being really, really good so long as you can find the gems for it. Maybe I'm just bad (I am bad), but I tried following this using the DLC route, ONLY putting points into arcane, and the hunter's nightmare was a real brick wall. Everything just does enormous damage, and even EGs don't do enough to murder enemies in one shot. Maybe I took the "ignore physical stats" too literally but it's just too easy to get trumped totally ignoring vitality. I need to give that character another shot, maybe do some more chalice stuff for some better gems.
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Oct 11, 2016 01:07
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Honestly the only times I felt that rally was pointless was during OoK and the giant sharks before him, and I never brought my vitality over maybe 25. To be fair I still haven’t done the CRF chalices, so maybe that doesn’t apply there, but against almost everything in the main game + DLC, rally is perfectly usable. For clarification, I used the Cane, Saif, and Blades of Mercy.
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Oct 11, 2016 17:03
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Gologle posted:I don't play Bloodborne anymore, but I've been watching some videos recently, and I noticed something. Check the description of the Lone Survivor starting build in your own games sometime. It's interesting how some of the "class" descriptions hint at connections to the actual game. Holy poo poo
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Oct 13, 2016 16:32
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You can fight Eileen by just not following her quest line - I know if you don't talk to her in the cathedral ward, she'll show up at the great cathedral after you kill rom
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Oct 14, 2016 04:31
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Mummy Brigade posted:I can regularly beat Gascoigne without dying, but Cleric Beast always takes a couple tries for me. I have issues with the camera in that fight and it leads to me panic dodging and getting stomped on. Then again I just beat BSB for the first time the other day so yeah I have the opposite issue: I can clown all over Cleric Beast first try on all my playthroughs, but I don’t think I’ve ever managed to beat Gascoign first try, it almost always takes me 2-4 attempts. For whatever reason soon as he goes beast mode I can never keep up. As for skill weapons, I find the Beasthunter Saif to be the most fun Skill weapon ever, and you can get it soon as you beat Vicar Amelia by sprinting through DLC. It might actually be my favorite weapon in the game. I’ve been doing a Reiterpallasch playthrough recently, and I’ve actually found it a ton of fun, but I still probably like the Saif better. You can also technically get it as soon as you beat Vicar Amelia, but you’ll also need to have beaten the Witches of Hemwick. Lots of people like the Blades of Mercy, and I think they're neat, but I never really fell in love with them. I’ve been wanting to do a Church Pick run, but you gotta get so far through the DLC I feel like It’d be hard to do a real “run” with it since I’d probably need to be at least 50-60% of the way through the game. CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Oct 14, 2016 |
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Oct 14, 2016 17:07
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Snak posted:Glascoigne != Gerhmann Oops, yeah I meant Gascoign, brainfart. As for the Saif, it's ugly but the transformed versions' mobility is just so fun and useful. It really plays into dashing in and out and jumping around everywhere.
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Oct 14, 2016 17:13
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I’ll totally defend the Reiterpallasch, I’m confused why it’s got an apparently bad rap. The regular version hits surprisingly hard for the stamina usage, but has a bit too long of a windup - so using the transformed mode makes up for that with lots of weaker hits. The way it works out is actually really interesting - if you only have time for one hit, then the regular version is stronger. If you’ve got time for three-four hits, then the transformed will do more damage. BUT if you have enough time to completely unload your stamina bar on an enemy, then the regular version pulls ahead again. It becomes an interesting game trying to get the most damage out of it and switching between the two modes so often. While this kind of thing definitely applies to other weapons, a lot of other weapons have really big changes in stamina usage, speed, damage, etc - so much of a change that they feel like completely different weapons. So it usually is just use one mode most of the time, and switch when special situations call for them. Maybe that’s me being bad, I dunno? But with the Reiterpallasch I feel much more encouraged to switch between the two modes than other weapons - since they’re similar, but subtly different.
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Oct 14, 2016 18:21
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Snak posted:My only issue with it is conceptual. What the gently caress are you supposed to put in your offhand that makes it useful to have a gun in your right hand? I’m currently doing my Reiterpallasch build so I can pvp with the cannon in my offhand. Also considering making the Reiter be slow poison, so I can boom them when they try to down an antidote or if I get off a parry with the Reiter. Real answer: having a torch always out is super nice.
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Oct 14, 2016 18:44
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I finally beat the bloody crow! It was a sloppy fight but here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OP0WGbNE_U
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Oct 15, 2016 05:18
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RyokoTK posted:Dude you rocked him, good work. Also that Reiterpallasch + Cannon combo is both a good look and seems to be pretty effective. Thanks! The Reiterpallasch Cannon combo is super fun but you can't use it much against regular enemies, since you really only get one shot. I'm planning on taking it to pvp once I round out my stats a bit more and finish upgrading stuff. The canon in my video was only +6 so it could definitely be dealing more damage. Although I guess if you stack on all of the +QS bullets of visceral attack runes, then you could run it against regular enemies.
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Oct 15, 2016 18:36
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