Dark Souls- PS3, Xbox 360, PC

[JJXB]

girlfriend just got it from lovefilm today. i hope to try it later myself.

[Zaarock]

How is painting leggings better than gold hemmed?

Gold Hemmed Black Skirt (unupgradable):
36/46/58/30 + 32.0 bleed resist

Painting Guardian Waistcloth +5:
34/46/68/65 + 26.7 bleed resist

the other pieces are arguable but the waistcloth has high lightning defence which is nice.
Apparently the Antiquated Dress is even better, I'll try and upgrade that soon. Has low fire resist though.

BTW, looks like the clams in Ash Lake have a higher drop rate for twinkling titanite than the ones in Crystal Cave, farming them as I'm typing :p

[Sumez]

Sounds good, cause I still never found a single one from either. +5 painting guardian leggings does sounds good, but not by much, and yeah, it requires a lot of twinkling....

[CMoon]

Antiquated skirt at +5 is:
62/88/26/85.

And no way that the Antiquated skirt is some kind of gandalf skirt, it's a total girls skirt, but yeah, other than fire it has great stats.

[Zaarock]

Woah, guess I gotta switch to that.. weighs one less than painting guardian as well. Too bad it doesn't look as cool :p

edit: woah, insane resistances at base too: 40 bleed 40 poison and 78 curse(!)

I guess FROM wants everyone to wear skirts huh.

[CMoon]

Think I'm sticking with elite knight armor for the upper torso, but any ideas for best helm or gloves? I don't think that skirt has any poise, which is too bad.

Just beat the two dudes in Anor Londo with some help that was summoned. I think they did more damage than me. Tried iron skin/great combustion, but did better luck throwing that damned crystal ring shield into their backs.

[Sumez]

The catarina gloves seem pretty amazing to me, but I've been wrong on every other armor piece so far, so I don't know if I'd trust me...

[sjewkestheloon]

Invisible paths in crystal caves... shudder.

[Elixir]

Invisible paths in crystal caves... shudder.

Easy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqaNNlnkjSI

[Sumez]

Invisible paths in crystal caves... shudder.

Just follow the notes people leave on the ground, I never had any problems

[Moniker]

N00bish question on weapon upgrading--

I've been sticking to using a Dark Knight sword I found early on, and have it upgraded to +1. I found another Twinkling Titanite (or whatever it's called) so that it's able to get upgraded again. I'm wondering if it'd be better to build up a standard weapon instead (or in tandem) since the standard titanite is cheap and available to buy at the blacksmith.

[Zaarock]

Upgrade it if you like it, you won't have any trouble getting materials for normal weapons but it's good to be selective with what you upgrade with twinkling titanite, as it's a pain to get apart from starting another NG+

[Leader Bee]

it's good to be selective with what you upgrade with twinkling titanite, as it's a pain to get

Ain't that the truth, only managed to +5 my black iron chestplate and +4 my Black Iron gauntlets with just 15 Twinkling titanite and i spent hours farming that stuff over the course of a few days. If i'm crazy enough maybe i'll try upgrading my Giants halberd with this stuff if only because it looks cool (damage seems really poor but maybe it's because it's unupgraded?)

[sjewkestheloon]

Invisible paths in crystal caves... shudder.

Easy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqaNNlnkjSI

Yep it was actually a piece of cake when I realised that there are only a couple of necessary paths. I was expecting a large area with multiple bonfires when in fact I got a couple of enemies and a boss.

[CMoon]

Making some progress in Tomb of Giants. No idea if this is where I should be right now or not (placed the Lordvessel and now it seems like I have a lot of places I should go.) Ended up killing Patches because I game him the wrong answer to one of his questions. Finally have access to Rhea's miracles (I have a faith build, so this was bugging me.)

Hah, found a room I have to drop into with like 6 giant skeletons in it. I may have to come back to that one.

Oh yeah, I'm like 65+ hours into the game. Wow.

[Elixir]

Probably retiring until 1.04 comes out. I could go on re: co-op, but people actually playing are already well aware.

[sjewkestheloon]

Went on a killing spree today and took down four bosses. Hopefully when I get back on tonight I will be taking down at least another one. More than 80 hours in and I expect to be finishing this very shortly, and almost immediately starting again from the top. What a corker.

Anyone else find that the challenge level drops off, or at least hits a plateau around Anor Londo? Maybe I haven't done the most difficult areas yet but I am having some real fun storming enemies and bosses at the moment.

[CMoon]

Anyone else find that the challenge level drops off, or at least hits a plateau around Anor Londo? Maybe I haven't done the most difficult areas yet but I am having some real fun storming enemies and bosses at the moment.

This is kind of my feeling, but there are probably multiple reasons for this (beyond CRS), one being that many of these areas can be explored to some extent before Anor Londo, so making them MORE difficult than Anor Londo might have been a bit crazy. The second being that Anor Londo is where a lot of things suddenly became available to you (certain embers, some amazing weapons/armor). Finally, I think Anor Londo also forced me to ramp up. I've been trying to use my souls to boost anything before I boost levels (making co-op play more viable), but in Anor Londo I also just started grinding my way up, as well as reassessing my gameplay (I became very good at parrying/backstabs). I even ramped up my pyro hand for Anor Londo, so by the time I got to the amazing chest (hehe), I was pretty damn powerful.

That said, I've definitely found some really touch spots in the Valley of the Giants, but seriously, that area was made artificially hard by the lighting problems.

About to take on Nito. My occult claymore is at +5, but I don't really have a great divine weapon. I'll probably just burn Nito until he's dead.

[Zaarock]

Well for one thing you get access to demon and lightning weapons when you reach anor londo, and there isn't really anything more you'll need for PvE (almost nothing is strong against lightning) but after some NG+ I guess the enemies resistances might get too high for lightning to be as effective as something that causes damage of one type etc.

[evil_ash_xero]

Making some progress in Tomb of Giants. No idea if this is where I should be right now or not (placed the Lordvessel and now it seems like I have a lot of places I should go.) Ended up killing Patches because I game him the wrong answer to one of his questions. Finally have access to Rhea's miracles (I have a faith build, so this was bugging me.)

Hah, found a room I have to drop into with like 6 giant skeletons in it. I may have to come back to that one.

Oh yeah, I'm like 65+ hours into the game. Wow.

Try to make sure you have "Cast Light", for the TOG. It's a spell you can learn from the NPC near the Hydra, in Darkroot Basin. You have to kill the Hydra, and then she is trapped in a golden golem, in a cave. Then you have to call upon her summon sign, which will be near the lake. All very convoluted.

Anyway, it's the only way you can see a damn thing down there. You can get a lantern, but it's a little later on, and you can fall to you death numerous times, before you get it.

Oh, and as for the skeletons..use pyromancy(always works in a bad situation). A fully powered fire orb, will kill a giant skeleton with two shots, and those wolves with one. It's pretty essential. Anyways, you'll need Great Combustion for Nito, so make sure you're working on your pyro.

I've beaten the game twice, so I know how useful that firepower is. It's a must.

[sjewkestheloon]

Finished Lost Izalith last night and it was a pain in the arse in places. I then headed to the Catacombs and made my way to Pinwheel with no estus flasks left. I destroyed him but on the last hit he erupted into a ball of fire and wiped me out:

You have unlocked the rite of kindling.
You Defeated.
You Died.

Nice.

I am guessing that I missed out on a bonfire somewhere so I have a way to walk but the area is cake compared to some other places.

I also got myself the Maggot helm thing to illuminate the the Tomb of Giants, my last location before the end. Quite sad about the imminent ending.

[Zaarock]

Oh, and as for the skeletons..use pyromancy(always works in a bad situation). A fully powered fire orb, will kill a giant skeleton with two shots, and those wolves with one.

All the enemies there are weak to fire, but you can just use quelaag's fury sword. I used it two handed and everything died in 1-3 hits and Nito was a joke on NG. On NG+ he was a lot more troublesome for some reason.

[sjewkestheloon]

Finished it today, what a corker. Doing ng+ straight away and thinking of working on a pvp build and stopping around 50-60 for raiding anor and onwards.

[CMoon]

Just drained New Londo Ruins. I can take those darkwraiths--sometimes two at a time, but there's a point where three of them come running at me at once, and I'm thinking it's time to reconsider my path.

Congrats on finishing it.

[evil_ash_xero]

Just drained New Londo Ruins. I can take those darkwraiths--sometimes two at a time, but there's a point where three of them come running at me at once, and I'm thinking it's time to reconsider my path.

Congrats on finishing it.

Yeah, those bastards can make things hard on you. They're weak to fire(as everything is).

If you have that slumbering Dragoncrest ring, wear it. You won't get mobbed.

[Moniker]

First foray into the Depths. Accidentally aggro'd the pyro teacher; while running from him a giant butcher started chasing me and killed him in the crossfire. Continued on, got invaded for the first time and landed a few hits before being one-shotted by a pyro caster. Second foray into the Depths. I fell through a trapdoor, killed a giant rat. Fell through another trap door, got cursed by a frog.

That's all for tonight.

[Elixir]

You can kill that giant rat? He disappeared from my game entirely (maybe after killing Gaping?). Oh well, maybe next build.

[evil_ash_xero]

First foray into the Depths. Accidentally aggro'd the pyro teacher; while running from him a giant butcher started chasing me and killed him in the crossfire. Continued on, got invaded for the first time and landed a few hits before being one-shotted by a pyro caster. Second foray into the Depths. I fell through a trapdoor, killed a giant rat. Fell through another trap door, got cursed by a frog.

That's all for tonight.

Make sure to pay for your sins, so you can learn from that pyro teacher.

[Moniker]

Make sure to pay for your sins, so you can learn from that pyro teacher.

He dead. From what I've read he won't come back even if I atone?

You can kill that giant rat? He disappeared from my game entirely (maybe after killing Gaping?). Oh well, maybe next build.

IIRC, go through the quasi-hidden door behind the meat table in the first open room and you drop down on the ledge next to him. I don't think he dropped anything, though, so no worries.

[Sumez]

You can kill that giant rat? He disappeared from my game entirely (maybe after killing Gaping?). Oh well, maybe next build.

Strange. I killed the rat after killing the Gaping Dragon.

Make sure to pay for your sins, so you can learn from that pyro teacher.

He dead. From what I've read he won't come back even if I atone?

What level is your flame? There's another teacher in Blighttown that's a lot better, but you need a high level flame (I know +10 is at least enough) for her to appear.
The problem here is that you need the first pyro teacher to level up your flame...

There's also a pyro teacher with the Chaos covenant, though, which is also in/near Blighttown. I suppose he can level up your flame as well? I wouldn't know, cause I accidentally agroed him (he looks just like an enemy of that area (with a big egg on his back), so watch out!)