Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I have managed to parry a few times. I don't know what makes me succeed, I get it right about 5% of the time. But I keep trying because I like the execution move I can apparently do after a successful parry.
Good stability is crucial, 100% damage reduction is secondary.
Though in DS1 in particular there aren't many shields with decent stability that aren't 100% phys reduction, except maybe the Eagle Shield which exists to prove stability matters more.
When I want a shield in DS1 I end up running the Wooden Shield (for weight reasons) or Grass Crest Shield (for the stamina, even on your back) 90% of the time.
But then, I use shields because they look cool to parry and cover my rolls instead of as a primary defense.
Re: bloodstains in areas with no enemies: they can be from falls, or from aggroing friendly NPCs, or just some enemy that you don't know about yet, or dragged in from nearby. Usually it's falls though.
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Yeah I've seen a few ghosts that just straight up run off of things, which is funny. (Personally I've never done that, nope)
I have another question, just to save me going to a wiki and potentially getting spoiled, can someone summarise wtf the story setup is? I understand a bunch of gods killed some dragons, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, and I didn't really catch why I'm undead. I think I'm trying to ring a bell that will... do something with all the undead people?
I have managed to parry a few times. I don't know what makes me succeed, I get it right about 5% of the time. But I keep trying because I like the execution move I can apparently do after a successful parry.
The parry frames in DS1 are in the beginning of the animation - if you don't time it quite right you might still get a half-parry which results in some damage getting blocked
In DS1 you generally have to parry the enemy's hand rather than the tip of their weapon, towards the end of the enemy's attack animation
I have managed to parry a few times. I don't know what makes me succeed, I get it right about 5% of the time. But I keep trying because I like the execution move I can apparently do after a successful parry.
It takes a lot of practice. I loaded up a video to get a feel for the timing and stood next to one of the hollows by firelink letting him take shots at me and attempting to parry until I could do it consistently BECAUSE it feels so good.
That said it’s not a required skill and you can block/dodge instead, just without as much punishment for the enemy.
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
I have another question, just to save me going to a wiki and potentially getting spoiled, can someone summarise wtf the story setup is? I understand a bunch of gods killed some dragons, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, and I didn't really catch why I'm undead. I think I'm trying to ring a bell that will... do something with all the undead people?
okay so some regular joes found the First Flames in the darkness, including, of course, the furtive pygmy, so easily forgotten. This gave them powers.
they used those powers to overthrow the endless, timeless, nothing ever happens, reign of the dragons with the help of the scaleless albino dragon Seath the Scaleless.
then they built kingdoms and castles and a world, and everything was cool for a while, but then the fire started to fade. Everything is decaying, people are dying, some of them are cursed to return as Undead, who bear that circle symbol on their back (chest?).
those guys are tossed into the Undead Asylum, because undead eventually become Hollow and are driven purely by a violent desire to eat souls. Legend tells of an undead that escapes the asylum and, through great effort, breaks the curse.
all of that was a very long time ago.
This legendary undead is, presumably, your character, the Chosen Undead.
The raven at the beginning takes you to Lordran because that's like, the end of time, where the gods lived.
But in Lordran, the flow of time is distorted. The flow of time itself is convoluted; with heroes centuries old phasing in and out.
that's why you see ghosts and bloodstains and meet the NPCs and summon other players as phantoms. They're not necessarily from the same timeline as your particular Chosen Undead
Yeah I've seen a few ghosts that just straight up run off of things, which is funny. (Personally I've never done that, nope)
I have another question, just to save me going to a wiki and potentially getting spoiled, can someone summarise wtf the story setup is? I understand a bunch of gods killed some dragons, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, and I didn't really catch why I'm undead. I think I'm trying to ring a bell that will... do something with all the undead people?
I summarized it in the OP! Undeath is something which is spreading as the Fire is fading
Undead of high status are generally encouraged to go on a pilgrimage to Lordran and prove their "worth" by ringing the bells - Lordran is the "Ancient Land of Lords" where the gods used to live
There's also means to deal damage to yourself, though those are kinda uncommon. I think a lot of the bloodstains in improbably areas are from people deliberately killing themselves so that their bloodstains will confuse others.
One negative I give to Dark Souls is that the games don't have a story, they have lore. Everything that happens in the game doesn't happen in the game, it happened before the game. During the game itself we're just killing everyone after the fact.
Dark Souls 1 and 3 also have bad intros in that they are just a list of names with no context or explanation of who these chumps are. 2's at least sets up the theme of the game itself.
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
edited June 2021
Dark Souls 2 has one of my favorite intros ever
edit: when the fireflies all go crazy and you see the ghosts of the gates open in the water, so dope.
The guy you meet in the Asylum, Oscar, was one of those Undead sent to ring the bells - the bells function as a test and an obstacle, ringing them will wake something
There is also Reah of Thorolund, she was sent to Lordran to retrieve the Rite of Kindling - the Rite of Kindling is something performed by Undead clerics and it is also related to the main story
Yeah I've seen a few ghosts that just straight up run off of things, which is funny. (Personally I've never done that, nope)
I have another question, just to save me going to a wiki and potentially getting spoiled, can someone summarise wtf the story setup is? I understand a bunch of gods killed some dragons, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, and I didn't really catch why I'm undead. I think I'm trying to ring a bell that will... do something with all the undead people?
In the beginning, no seriously, the world was grey and the only major things were giant grey trees and grey dragons. Then some randos found an important fire deep in the earth and they each took a piece of it to gain phenomenal power and used it to kill the dragons and begin the Age of Fire.
Fast forward and after a period where gods lived among humans the original fire starts to go out, resulting in the rise of the Undead, and leading one of those original flame holders to go reignite it. Stuff happens, the fire begins to weaken again, and now all the Undead are being carried off to the Asylum because one of them needs to follow in the other dude's footsteps, find the original fire, and link it again to break the Undead curse and prevent the world from ending. The bells are just a test, to see who might be worthy.
I was deliberately vague on a number of points so you can still discover what's to come, since knowing specifics of the past would constitute future spoilers.
edit: when the fireflies all go crazy and you see the ghosts of the gates open in the water, so dope.
It basically tells us that we are going to go through this without knowing who we are or what this kingdom is, killing everything in our path, and not having any idea why we're doing it. AKA the experience the vast majority of people have while playing the games themselves. It's taking the experience of playing the game and using it as a metaphor to explain what going Hollow feels like.
My fav thing about being the Chosen Undead (and the other Vague Term protagonists) is that it’s definitely a stab in the dark from the other forces of the world. Oh, you’re absolutely the destined hero, now go over there and fight this giant tarantula. Give up? Shucks... Someone fetch another Chosen Undead.
It’s telling that you always find the corpse of the guy on the boxart under half way through each Souls game.
The story is intentionally vague and dreamlike, but the gist is explained in the opening cinematic and from talking to NPCs. You can also figure out more about what's going on from environmental storytelling and flavor text on items, but it's never really laid out definitively.
You are an undead, you can't die permanently because you are always revived afterwards at a bonfire, and you will gradually go mad and feral as you suffer and get killed over and over. A plague of undeath is afflicting the world, and legends say the undead must travel to Lordran, the legendary land of the gods, to do... something. Ring a bell? You end up breaking out of the prison for those who cannot die, get carried to Lordran by a giant raven, and then figure out what to do from there. Another sane but depressed undead at Firelink Shrine mentions there are actually two bells you need to ring, so that's a start. One is up above, in the Undead Church; and one far, far below, in the ruins at the base of Blighttown. Ring them both, and something happens! Brilliant, right? Not much to go on, but I have a feeling that won't stop you. So, off you go. It is why you came, isn't it? To this accursed land of the Undead? Hah hah hah hah...
BahamutZERO on
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
This isn’t a spoiler, I don’t think, but I always figured:
Fire is ambition and high minded notions like pride.
Dark is want and low minded notions like survive.
The gods could achieve great things but like fire, they burnt themselves out.
Humanity can achieve great things too, but they’ll always succumb to their dark souls, seeking to survive at all costs, even if it’s self destructive.
The undead plague is the dark trying to bring balance to the extra fire Gwyn tried to bring to the world to prolong his age. This all kind of assumes humans in Dark Souls aren’t humans at all, but something equally magical as gods.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
This isn’t a spoiler, I don’t think, but I always figured:
Fire is ambition and high minded notions like pride.
Dark is want and low minded notions like survive.
The gods could achieve great things but like fire, they burnt themselves out.
Humanity can achieve great things too, but they’ll always succumb to their dark souls, seeking to survive at all costs, even if it’s self destructive.
The undead plague is the dark trying to bring balance to the extra fire Gwyn tried to bring to the world to prolong his age. This all kind of assumes humans in Dark Souls aren’t humans at all, but something equally magical as gods.
I think it's like fire is order and activity and dynamism, and dark is entropy and stillness.
This isn’t a spoiler, I don’t think, but I always figured:
Fire is ambition and high minded notions like pride.
Dark is want and low minded notions like survive.
The gods could achieve great things but like fire, they burnt themselves out.
Humanity can achieve great things too, but they’ll always succumb to their dark souls, seeking to survive at all costs, even if it’s self destructive.
The undead plague is the dark trying to bring balance to the extra fire Gwyn tried to bring to the world to prolong his age. This all kind of assumes humans in Dark Souls aren’t humans at all, but something equally magical as gods.
I think it's like fire is order and activity and dynamism, and dark is entropy and stillness.
Yeah that’s pretty true too now I think about it.
Except the grey of the Age of Dragons is also a stillness thing.
But you’re right that the dark as a lot of gooey rot and crumbly ruins going on.
Rot is merely a transitory state on the way to the perfect entropy of the dragons
Actually no I think the dragons and their age were outside the dark/fire dichotomy, things only got fucked up because the gods overthrew them by introducing activity and entropy
I have managed to parry a few times. I don't know what makes me succeed, I get it right about 5% of the time. But I keep trying because I like the execution move I can apparently do after a successful parry.
Parrying is totally optional in Dark Souls. For lots of folks it's just simply a poor risk/reward proposition. Don't worry about doing it unless you like, want to.
Parrying is a bigger deal and encouraged more in Bloodborne, but ultimately it's still optional.
Parrying is the foundation of combat in Sekiro, but it also works way differently where a slightly missed parry can still largely function like a block
Rot is merely a transitory state on the way to the perfect entropy of the dragons
Actually no I think the dragons and their age were outside the dark/fire dichotomy, things only got fucked up because the gods overthrew them by introducing activity and entropy
Yeah, but thinking about it, it was that disparity that kicked things off. I reckon too much of either will bring it back to Dragon Time. You can either burn the world to ashes or break it down with rot, either way in the end it’ll all fade back to grey.
Rot is merely a transitory state on the way to the perfect entropy of the dragons
Actually no I think the dragons and their age were outside the dark/fire dichotomy, things only got fucked up because the gods overthrew them by introducing activity and entropy
First there was nothing, then there was something, and once there's something in the nothing it's not nothing any more it's something and can only become something else but never nothing again.
The way I look at fire and humanity is basically just by mapping it onto my surface-level understanding of thermodynamics and entropy. Like, in real life, the universe is currently in a highly ordered state, where you've got stars and planets and galaxies and stuff, a whole bunch of matter in complex systems. But over the course of an abyss of time, the stars are going to burn out, matter is going to break down, the universe eventually becoming a homogenous soup of subatomic particles. Maintaining an ordered state takes energy, and to get that energy you have to break something else down into a less ordered state, so things are always going to be breaking down more and more until there're no more things to break down.
And that's basically what I think Fire is in Dark Souls, but with some vague metaphysics instead of matter. Instead of being order in sense of physical systems, it's order as concepts of like, linear time, and intelligent thought, consistent space, life and death, civilization.
My interpretation of Dark Souls and how I am playing this run of DS3:
We are always pavlovian trained to think that darkness in a game or movie will be bad, and that whiteness/light is good. But all you're doing in DS1 and 3 at least is sustaining the gods' ability to rule and control and have power. You get pieces of lord souls from everything, that is what the light/white souls are and it's what is used as a currency. Those that control a large number of lord souls become powerful and want the fire to continue so their control can continue.
So what you learn in the DLC of DS1 is that the Dark Soul is literally the descriptor of humanity. That it isn't a good/bad thing, just different, and that everything you know about good/evil is through the propaganda of the gods and those who follow them.
I think the reason the Usurpation ending is so convoluted and difficult is because it's objectively the good ending. It is humanity wresting control of the cycle and building something for themselves, outside of the basic enslavement they've been under from the gods.
Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
I really enjoy the mythology of Dark Souls because of its use of fire as a conceit, it doesn't feel nearly as rote as a lot of other fake fantasy myths because it's so... weirdly specific in its language
It's very specifically not "light" and "dark," it's "fire" and "dark," because light is just a side effect of fire. The fire is the thing that matters, because it introduced the concept of "disparity," which is one of those things that makes me jealous as a writer. If something is hot, then something else must be cold. If fire began, then it must eventually end, therefore life and death exist. If there is light, there must also be dark, or how would we know the difference between either?
There's something I find so cool about, not something springing from nothing ala Genesis, but one thing becoming many things, and through that the world begins
But yeah I also subscribe to the theory that
prolonging the age of fire long past its sell-by date is not good for the universe as a whole or the people in it, that usurping that power is more in line with what has to be done to build something new
That or just let it die and let something new be born in its place, either works as an ending for me
Posts
Though in DS1 in particular there aren't many shields with decent stability that aren't 100% phys reduction, except maybe the Eagle Shield which exists to prove stability matters more.
When I want a shield in DS1 I end up running the Wooden Shield (for weight reasons) or Grass Crest Shield (for the stamina, even on your back) 90% of the time.
But then, I use shields because they look cool to parry and cover my rolls instead of as a primary defense.
I have another question, just to save me going to a wiki and potentially getting spoiled, can someone summarise wtf the story setup is? I understand a bunch of gods killed some dragons, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, and I didn't really catch why I'm undead. I think I'm trying to ring a bell that will... do something with all the undead people?
The parry frames in DS1 are in the beginning of the animation - if you don't time it quite right you might still get a half-parry which results in some damage getting blocked
In DS1 you generally have to parry the enemy's hand rather than the tip of their weapon, towards the end of the enemy's attack animation
It takes a lot of practice. I loaded up a video to get a feel for the timing and stood next to one of the hollows by firelink letting him take shots at me and attempting to parry until I could do it consistently BECAUSE it feels so good.
That said it’s not a required skill and you can block/dodge instead, just without as much punishment for the enemy.
okay so some regular joes found the First Flames in the darkness, including, of course, the furtive pygmy, so easily forgotten. This gave them powers.
they used those powers to overthrow the endless, timeless, nothing ever happens, reign of the dragons with the help of the scaleless albino dragon Seath the Scaleless.
then they built kingdoms and castles and a world, and everything was cool for a while, but then the fire started to fade. Everything is decaying, people are dying, some of them are cursed to return as Undead, who bear that circle symbol on their back (chest?).
those guys are tossed into the Undead Asylum, because undead eventually become Hollow and are driven purely by a violent desire to eat souls. Legend tells of an undead that escapes the asylum and, through great effort, breaks the curse.
all of that was a very long time ago.
This legendary undead is, presumably, your character, the Chosen Undead.
The raven at the beginning takes you to Lordran because that's like, the end of time, where the gods lived.
But in Lordran, the flow of time is distorted. The flow of time itself is convoluted; with heroes centuries old phasing in and out.
that's why you see ghosts and bloodstains and meet the NPCs and summon other players as phantoms. They're not necessarily from the same timeline as your particular Chosen Undead
I summarized it in the OP! Undeath is something which is spreading as the Fire is fading
Undead of high status are generally encouraged to go on a pilgrimage to Lordran and prove their "worth" by ringing the bells - Lordran is the "Ancient Land of Lords" where the gods used to live
Dark Souls 1 and 3 also have bad intros in that they are just a list of names with no context or explanation of who these chumps are. 2's at least sets up the theme of the game itself.
edit: when the fireflies all go crazy and you see the ghosts of the gates open in the water, so dope.
There is also Reah of Thorolund, she was sent to Lordran to retrieve the Rite of Kindling - the Rite of Kindling is something performed by Undead clerics and it is also related to the main story
Not joking, this is one of the central ideas of the entire series!
Fast forward and after a period where gods lived among humans the original fire starts to go out, resulting in the rise of the Undead, and leading one of those original flame holders to go reignite it. Stuff happens, the fire begins to weaken again, and now all the Undead are being carried off to the Asylum because one of them needs to follow in the other dude's footsteps, find the original fire, and link it again to break the Undead curse and prevent the world from ending. The bells are just a test, to see who might be worthy.
I was deliberately vague on a number of points so you can still discover what's to come, since knowing specifics of the past would constitute future spoilers.
It basically tells us that we are going to go through this without knowing who we are or what this kingdom is, killing everything in our path, and not having any idea why we're doing it. AKA the experience the vast majority of people have while playing the games themselves. It's taking the experience of playing the game and using it as a metaphor to explain what going Hollow feels like.
Dark Souls 2 is fucking great.
Whereas humans have humanity
It’s telling that you always find the corpse of the guy on the boxart under half way through each Souls game.
You are an undead, you can't die permanently because you are always revived afterwards at a bonfire, and you will gradually go mad and feral as you suffer and get killed over and over. A plague of undeath is afflicting the world, and legends say the undead must travel to Lordran, the legendary land of the gods, to do... something. Ring a bell? You end up breaking out of the prison for those who cannot die, get carried to Lordran by a giant raven, and then figure out what to do from there. Another sane but depressed undead at Firelink Shrine mentions there are actually two bells you need to ring, so that's a start. One is up above, in the Undead Church; and one far, far below, in the ruins at the base of Blighttown. Ring them both, and something happens! Brilliant, right? Not much to go on, but I have a feeling that won't stop you. So, off you go. It is why you came, isn't it? To this accursed land of the Undead? Hah hah hah hah...
Humanity is like, generated by being Human or something? I think it's a whole different energy source. Like, the giant rats have Humanity.
I do not know for certain, obviously. which is basically the caveat at the end of any discussion of Dark Souls lore.
should I play them in a row, I guess?
Dark is want and low minded notions like survive.
The gods could achieve great things but like fire, they burnt themselves out.
Humanity can achieve great things too, but they’ll always succumb to their dark souls, seeking to survive at all costs, even if it’s self destructive.
The undead plague is the dark trying to bring balance to the extra fire Gwyn tried to bring to the world to prolong his age. This all kind of assumes humans in Dark Souls aren’t humans at all, but something equally magical as gods.
yeah, can't imagine why anything other than release order would be any fun
Except the grey of the Age of Dragons is also a stillness thing.
But you’re right that the dark as a lot of gooey rot and crumbly ruins going on.
Actually no I think the dragons and their age were outside the dark/fire dichotomy, things only got fucked up because the gods overthrew them by introducing activity and entropy
Parrying is totally optional in Dark Souls. For lots of folks it's just simply a poor risk/reward proposition. Don't worry about doing it unless you like, want to.
Parrying is a bigger deal and encouraged more in Bloodborne, but ultimately it's still optional.
Parrying is the foundation of combat in Sekiro, but it also works way differently where a slightly missed parry can still largely function like a block
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
the grinding wasn't so bad, but racing through NG+ and opening the castle gates on NG++ or whatever was deeply miserable
NG+ iron keep was traumatic
First there was nothing, then there was something, and once there's something in the nothing it's not nothing any more it's something and can only become something else but never nothing again.
And that's basically what I think Fire is in Dark Souls, but with some vague metaphysics instead of matter. Instead of being order in sense of physical systems, it's order as concepts of like, linear time, and intelligent thought, consistent space, life and death, civilization.
So what you learn in the DLC of DS1 is that the Dark Soul is literally the descriptor of humanity. That it isn't a good/bad thing, just different, and that everything you know about good/evil is through the propaganda of the gods and those who follow them.
I think the reason the Usurpation ending is so convoluted and difficult is because it's objectively the good ending. It is humanity wresting control of the cycle and building something for themselves, outside of the basic enslavement they've been under from the gods.
That's my take, anyway.
It's very specifically not "light" and "dark," it's "fire" and "dark," because light is just a side effect of fire. The fire is the thing that matters, because it introduced the concept of "disparity," which is one of those things that makes me jealous as a writer. If something is hot, then something else must be cold. If fire began, then it must eventually end, therefore life and death exist. If there is light, there must also be dark, or how would we know the difference between either?
There's something I find so cool about, not something springing from nothing ala Genesis, but one thing becoming many things, and through that the world begins
But yeah I also subscribe to the theory that
That or just let it die and let something new be born in its place, either works as an ending for me
Man Dark Souls 3 owns
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
I took a zweihander +5 into the bell gargoyle fight and it was gross how fast they died, I should have done a Big Sword build ages ago