SA2's Gaming Blog Topic

[ganonfloyd]

This was actually highly entertaining to read.

[Marie Rose]

It was an entertaining fight even with how basic it was

[Marie Rose]

Been through a lot & I’m near the end of the game so I’ll try to go through everything a little fast.

- Ran through shaded woods, everything past bonfire 3 was highly magic resistant so melee all the way, lightning Uchi was surprising good here. Katanas are rather meh in this game, they nerfed the speed for some odd reason as they really aren’t that strong, yet swing so slowly after the initial first swing. Fought Najka, attempted to magic spam her, but in true DkS2 tradition, she could out-range me & do a better job of it so another point for melee. She also had the DkS1 version of homing soulmass, the one that did good damage, tended to track targets & came out pretty fast. Shouldn’t be a surprise to learn I stomped her once I got her pattern down & strafed like usual.

- Ran through Doors of Pharros & unintentionally got to Brightstone Cove Tseldora, cleared out the enemies & got to the boss door before turning back. Went back to Pharros & began farming all the enemies here till one finally dropped the Grym Greatshield that’s oh so good. Then I kept farming them since they dropped chucks, which are too damn rare in this game. Travelled back to Iron Keep once I was done grinding like 20 levels since actually holding that shield required a str level of 32, and mine was only high enough to wield the Uchi.

- Smelter Demon, my goodness, this guy was an douchebag. I’d also like to know what **** on the development team thought this fight needed to be one 1 of the 4 required for Lucatiel. The one who wrecks normal shields, wrecks health bars when he eventually hits you, and eats away health just by being near him. He’s also one of the few bosses who doesn’t give a shit about my ring, he just destroys Luca all day because her AI is retarded & he has such a massive health bar I could never kill him in time. Props to anyone who could actually kill this guy with Luca alive at the end, you’ve got far more patience than me. After repeatedly quitting the game every time Luca died, I just pushed her off the ledge before the door & she stayed there the whole fight. Though I had to do this 3 times because he got 2 BS deaths on me, one was his AoE when I was like a mile away, second was because I was having a good run but I was struggling to keep my stamina up. Figure I’d eat one of those stamina recovery herbs, a shame that it takes like 6 fucking seconds to eat the damn thing. Enough time for Smelter to charge at me from the other side of the room and hit me. The fuck is this shit? How long does it take to eat some damn herbs? This ain’t the time to guess what favour they are, I’m in the middle of a serious fight here! Here I thought the estus was too slow…don’t even know if the win with Luca counted, don’t care either.

- After such frustration, I decided I needed more & went to try the Lost Sinner next, cleared out the place before summoning Luca. Attempt was going well, getting a lot of good hits in & such then Luca got hit & died when she had like 20% health left. Sighed, waited to get some space, then press start & quit game. Tried again using the red eye ring, this time I could barely get a safe hit in, whenever I striked she always seemed to be attacking, and even wearing some of the best armor I had, she could have still killed me in just over 3 hits. I still think the defensive stats make very little difference. Nearly died because Luca took her sweet time actually landing hits while I tap-danced around the area as I tried to line LS up so Luca wouldn’t get hit, rather annoying.

- Since I was still human, I figured I may as well rap up Luca’s stupid stuff & went down to The Gutter. Place was annoying due to the stupid poison statues, most of which I broke in advance, died twice to crappy jumps, aside from that I took my time & got through. Black Gulch was even more annoying because the number of poison statues increased 3x as much. Had to go look up how on earth you get Luca for this boss since the game tries pretty damn hard to hide any trace of her. The Rotten was rather easy, he was nice enough to take a dive so I could finally be done with Luca’s stupid side quest. Good looking out, man.

- Went back to Brightstone & cleared the area to fight the boss with Benhart who also has the same requirements as Luca, but far less frustrating. I take back what I said about the Jabba the Hut dude, this guy is the Pinwheel of the game, Prowling Magus or something. Took out the cleric helpers & minions with ease using my longsword then threw 3 dark orbs at the boss & watched his health drop in moments. I had no idea the guy was gonna be that weak, would have killed him first if I knew his HP was that low, Benhart barely had anything to do since I was killing these guys so fast. On another note, I hated the second half of the area since the magicians are placed just far enough so that you can’t lock on & fire magic at them, but of course the same doesn’t apply to them, and they can do it all day, of course. Ran through and entered some building where the next boss was, walked all the way down on cobwebs & arrived at the door. I wasn’t actually ready for the boss but I couldn’t leave at this point.

- Found an NPC summon tucked away in a corner, Ashen Knight Boyd. Normally I’d go solo for any boss the first time unless I have to bring the NPC along for a reason, but what the hell, figured I’d try him out. This guy was surprisingly good, took out the minions with me fast, then ran right in & started fighting Freja while I stood in the corner & spammed magic for the first time in ages since almost no boss lets me get away with that. To my surprise, this guy was actually blocking & rolling through half of Freja’s attacks, holy shit, I was stunned. It’s as if the one NPC they want you bringing numerous times is the one you gotta babysit, where the hell was this guy when I fought Smelter? Hell, where’s the mage chick who could spam soul spear all day during the Ruin Sentinels fight? Where’s the clown I’ve heard about that’s capable of soloing the Medusa boss with his pyromancy? So things went well, he still got hit a lot but he could take the hits unlike Luca, both him & the boss were down to like 20% when Freja’s backup squad began to show up. I wasn’t having them interrupt so I ran in with my sword & got smacked. I get back up, land one swing, second somehow misses, land the third, get smacked. Get back up, land the final hit & win. Nearly got killed with the second hit somehow missing, those hitboxes tho. You were a big help, Boyd, I'll place you on the good summons list. Easily killed Vengarl’s body because he glitched near the bonfire.

I’ll update the other bits later

[ganonfloyd]

Prowling Magus still has a great name.

[Marie Rose]

Shame I can't say the same for his fighting skills

[ganonfloyd]

Word.

I still hate Dragonrider more though.

[Marie Rose]

Why?

[ganonfloyd]

Well on one hand I found him to be on the same level of difficulty, he's just a slower fight (if you can circle him you've basically won.) Beyond that, his design is boring and his name is super disappointing since I was expecting a dude riding a dragon or something. Prowling Magus is easy, but there's still some slight management you have to do with the crowd and he's not just another "circle the warrior" fight.

[Marie Rose]

I was gonna touch on that tactic later on, and how most fights generally come down to that.

[ganonfloyd]

Most of my favorite bosses in the game are the ones that deviate from that to a certain degree.

[Marie Rose]

- Forgot to mention somewhere down the line I visited Belfry Luna (offline, of course so I don’t get invaded every few minutes) & fought the Gargoyles. I have fond memories of grinding these guys for sunlight medals back in DkS because magic was super effective against them. I don’t know if the same applies here, it did pretty meh damage. But 90% of the time you’ll regularly have 3 of these guys gunning for your ass & their attack patterns seemed pretty random which just annoyed me. I one-shot it because I ran around using long ranged attacks because running in to attack got me hit half the time.

- Went back through Iron Keep to finish it, explored Belfry Sol while doing so. Old Iron King while visually being a nice looking boss, his actual attacks leave much to be desired. My first attempt, I died because during the long build-up I started spamming magic, I mean, why not? The guy’s taking his sweet time to come fight me so I may as well get a head start. Then I moved to the right & immediately drop into a hole of lava, why the hell is there a random hole right there? Second time I’m on the right side & I get ground bounced right into the lava. Third time, since I hated the arena as it was getting me killed more than the boss itself, I just tanked most of his stuff, didn’t bother rolling anywhere that looked unsafe.

- Took a bit of time out to go back to Doors of Pharros & kill the Royal Rat Authority, who’s basically Sif combined with the cheapness of Capra Demon with the 5 rat minions that inflict toxic upon being hit twice. As if toxic wasn’t already too much in the original, they made me lava level bad. The big rat himself was annoying, for some reason I couldn’t consistently dodge the charging headbutt, even though I knew the timing. The two sweeps? I’d get that like 90% of the time, headbutt was like 50%, after a while I’d just block if the game was gonna delay my dodge & not have it come out.

- Went back to kill the Executioner’s Chariot, which I had completely forgotten about, as I only went there to grab the sublime bone dust back before I fought the Skeleton Lords & never looked back. Was pretty easy, as I was far overleveled for this boss since I should have done it ages ago. At this point I had lighting spears, which were better than the magic I had so I used them once I got the horse out in the open to fight on my level.

- Took a little while to figure out where the hell I had to go to get to Drangleic Castle. Ran through the first part rather smoothly, actually missed the first bonfire & kept going, killed some statues then a sentinel showed up out of nowhere. Welp, better start strafing to the left. Actually grinding this area is a little annoying if all the sentinels get out because they’ll always try interrupt & get hits on you from offscreen. Anyway, I passed a few rooms & stuff, rolled through the poison mask room & came to one with three shield knights in there. I wasn’t ready since I was low on estus & resources, then all of a summon some **** NPC invades & the guy is literally 2 feet behind me on the stairs, attacking my back, the hell is this? Had to lure that **** back to a bigger room before continuing. Found the Queen, found the boss gate, turned around to go find the bonfire I missed. Also found the hole in one of the nearby rooms leading to that Dark Pilgrim guy so that’s good.

- So, first attempt at two Dragonriders. Guy was across the room so figured I’d start with lightning spears, I get speared by the second guy up top. Circle around the first & try to attack, speared again. I try to get some space to estus, speared again, dead. I know I normally go on about BS, but this was true BS, as if he deliberately waited for any moment where I was doing something to snipe me. Second attempt, I just fight this guy normally & one of his swings knocks down the second guy, then I back up & start ranging them. The second one had lower health for some reason, odd, well whatever. Run through the rest of the place while talking to Benhart beside the next bonfire, open the path up to that Looking Glass Knight. Decided to kill the chess pieces 15 times so they wouldn’t come back before challenging LGK. Summoned Benhart beside the door because this is one of his 4 fights. Wore the red eye ring because although I had no idea if he was as bad as Luca since Prowling Magus was a joke, didn’t wanna risk him dying.

- Fight went rather smoothly, LGK was slow enough that I could have easily taken the guy using strafe 101 but I didn't wanna risk Benhart possibly getting killed so I kited him around with ranged stuff, then ran in to attack when he called a mirror NPC. Of course, LGK interrupts when I nearly killed him and I almost die. Aside from that it didn't take long to get him down.

- So, Shrine of Amana, the place most people hate & I can easily see why. Probably the first place I considered killing all those annoying soul arrow spamming mages just so I wouldn't have to see them again. It was bearable until the small bit right before the cave with the 3rd bonfire where two mages will target you at once, I just couldn't get past those assholes. First time I attempt, I killed the one to the far left then the other killed me moments after because I had little health when I got to her. Second time, I kill both but then the two other cleric guys rush over & beat my face in when they didn't run over before. Next I just sniped them with arrows (yet they're somehow still able to target me from a mile away with magic, that's totally fair) and lured the cleric guys away from the healer beside them. Did you also know there's an NPC summon halfway to the third bonfire? Surprised me too, I was still human at that point. After the third bonfire, I groaned when as soon as I exited the cave there was a mage already shooting soul arrows from a mile away. Had to bring out the bow again just to leave. Fortunately there weren't many still around, although it was very annoying to have an NPC randomly spawn & start hitting me with crystal soul spears. Had to drawn this **** back to the cave to kill the caster. Fortunately spells fly over your head if you're right up in their face, the constant rolling was merely wasting my time though. Getting real sick of the invasions at the worst times.

- Demon of Song, how do you fight this guy exactly? Can't do much when he covers his face (and does the annoying body slam) and half the time he reveals himself he's swinging his arms everywhere. Magic was actually beginning to get decent here so I magic spammed him as I didn't wanna risk dealing with the stupid mages again.

Still got a lot more left.

[ganonfloyd]

Gotta wait for his skull face to pop out then attack that in the interim between his attack and his going back into the "shell".

[Marie Rose]

- So I ran through Undead Crypt, had to deal with the same annoying NPC invader who fortunately didn’t spawn right behind me this time, also picked up a spare copy of Soul Spear from the merchant here. I died in that room  you drop into right after the shield knights in the narrow hallway several times while trying to find the exit, keeping my souls was quite a hassle. Activated the shortcut here from the 2nd bonfire to the path leading to the boss. Cleared out the enemies once, then I restocked & just made a run for the fog door, only getting hits moments before I got there. Velstadt wasn’t took hard, for one he never hit me with his overhead slam, and only once with the horizontal swing, I had him beat. Though I never managed to avoid the attack where he fires dark orbs around the room, what do you do against that?

- Took a while to figure out how to get to Aldia’s Keep, found Luca by the bonfire, almost forgot she shows up here. Finally gave me her stuff and afterwards I felt compelled to kill her after the frustration she put me through, would have probably been a mercy kill even if I had actually done it. Killed the NPC phantom that spawned as soon as I walk in the door, then got killed by the undead dinosaur using a suicide attack on me, I was unaware it actually tries to target you. Didn’t free Navlan like everyone says so I could talk to him while hollow & eventually get his stuff. Found a bonfire halfway through behind a random hidden wall on stairs near the acid room with the dogs only because I saw someone else find that bonfire. Found Soul Geyser in that room, now finally magic can be OP, since Soul Geyser is basically Soul Spear on steroids & not in the Crystal Soul Spear way. Soul Geyser fires 5 Soul Spears at once at an enemy, can only be used once but you get an extra cast if attunement is levelled high enough. Anyway, I figured I’d fight melee style for the boss like usual. I walk in to fight the Guardian Dragon, run up & do about 140 damage, which was kinda weak compared to normal. Then the guy flies up & starts bombarding me with fire AoEs until I’m pretty much dead, cheesy as fuck. So I to get out my spears & do the same to him the next attempt, got him down to 20% then finished him with 2 great heavy soul arrows, which was probably the first time I could do a better job of out-ranging the boss than the other way round.

- Get to Dragon Aerie, the first dragon immediately attacks as I’m on screen, I try to block, lose all stamina & knocked down. I get up while he’s still breathing fire & die since it hits me while I can’t block, BS. I cheesed him out the same way, then came back to get the titanite bugs & found out they’re like the demonic spiders of DkS, as they don’t respawn at all, which I suppose is good enough since they took too long to kill. For some reason there’s a ton of stupid exploding zombies walking about, I really hate these guys.  Not really sure why Dragon Aerie & Dragon Shrine needed to be 2 different areas but whatever. Finally got the staff that actually makes magic worthwhile, near the end of the game. The guys with swords function the same as the old knights back at Heide’s tower. The guys with the massive maces swing ridiculously fast compared to how they look, & can easily kill me with one full combo, these guys are OP, nerf plz. Same with the dudes wielding shields & hammers, but not as fast. Got to the Guardian Dragon eventually after a few deaths, got the heart then it was time to wrap up some optional stuff right after memories.

- Went through the optional giant memories to get the items & the soul of a giant for later. Met Benhart twice so his summon would be available during the boss. Summoned him for the boss but I died to BS where smoke covered the entire screen as I was hit by the stupid assholes throwing fire, then smacked into the ground by the Giant Lord the second I could see things again. Hell, I could barely tell what the guy was doing with his sword most of the time since I could only see his damn feet. Benhart lost tons of health due to stupid nonsense & got flattened by the boss when he was moments away from being killed, press start, quit game. Wore the red eye ring but it was harder to survive because I was over 70% burden & one sword slam couldn’t be blocked. I don’t exactly appreciate the constant fire AoEs being thrown near the boss that take 40% of my life though. Spoke to Benhart again, got his stuff, time to wrap things up.

- One of the big guys I’d been preparing for a long time ago, to the point that I was so stingy to spend effigies on anything other than summoning NPCs to get their stuff, I’d stockpiled at least 80 human effigies by this point, I regularly beat bosses at 75% health only because of the ring of binding, and if it came to it, I’d do it at 50% because FromSoft decided effigies shouldn’t be infinitely bought or acquired by farming, and that turning human after helping others kill bosses was apparently a glitch & not supposed to happen. I’d done a ton of grinding on all the guys at Dragon Shrine so I can wear most of Havel’s stuff & his shield before starting this. Got through the first & second abyssal dungeons rather easily, it helped that the enemies did reasonable damage to me & they weren’t taking like 40% health with every hit so I could have tanked them if I wanted. Died immediately in the 3rd dungeon because they put bottomless pits in the area right off the bat, thanks game. Only real tough bit in that area was dealing with the Havel dude & Ricard, who was annoyingly fast. Then I finally got to Darklurker, and I one-shotted him. Yep. Dominated him with magic, brought out my Soul Spears & tried not to attack if he was in the middle of something since I had no idea how much damage his attacks did. When he split, I brought out my Soul Geyser & it ate through his remaining health bar quick, then I ran to the side to avoid the attacks the two were launching when they died. Go home, Darklurker, you’re done, get rekt. That’s why it’s good to have magic as an option, even if it may suck for about 65% of the game.

- Next was Vendrick, I had cleared out the path 15 times much earlier just to make the run there much smoother. Figured I could magic spam him but I got him to around 55% when I ran out of the good spells, would probably be much lower if I bothered to kill the Ancient Dragon. He got me after during one moment where he broke my guard & couldn’t roll, even with Havel‘s shield at +4 (not +5 because From deserved I can‘t buy twinkling titanite & if the few enemies that drop it stop spawning then you‘re done, nice). I try again, full melee this time, took ages & what was the ultimate strafing challenge but I eventually got him down without being too risky, took far less tries than I was expecting. Now I just have the final boss for me to deal with.

[ganonfloyd]

Darklurker is a tremendous pain without magic.

[Marie Rose]

So I've heard, good thing magic can finally become OP by the time you're actually able to fight him