Salt and Sanctuary Catch-All

Yeah, I hit that same string of bosses after the first couple. There are several optional ones that aren't very far off the beaten path. I don't think I've hit a rapid succession of bosses since that point.

I'm currently not quite sure where to go. I just killed

Spoiler:

The Tree of Men.

Ever new entrance I can find is blocked by glowing red walls. I'll have to retrace my steps and see what I'm missing. While I love the fact that the Souls games don't bother with in-game maps, I don't think it makes as much sense in a sprawling 2D space.

In brighter news, I crafted a class 3 greathammer that is just melting normal enemies, and I've discovered several new traversal skills.

Have there been any whispers yet about the PC release date?

Tyops wrote:

Have there been any whispers yet about the PC release date?

I think whispers of summer, but nothing set in stone yet.

I'm through the False Jester now. This game is flipping great.

I hear summer too for PC.

Anyone running with heavy armor?

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

Anyone running with heavy armor?

I'm heading that way, but not there yet. I can maybe wear 2 pieces of heavy armor while staying under 75% load atm. I think the fact that I went deep towards miracles is going to prevent me from going full heavy armor. It seems like you really need to commit to endurance in order to use a full set.

I can notice a big difference in my damage mitigation with just the two pieces that I'm wearing, so going that route will probably be worth it.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

I'm through the False Jester now. This game is flipping great.

I hear summer too for PC.

Anyone running with heavy armor?

I am (started as Knight). I've been upgrading the chain pieces I've found so far. Killed a jester, unlocked a navigational ability, and have been roaming around looking for things to loot.

Endurance is an absolute requirement to get anywhere with it. The damage reduction is very nice, but the weight on those pieces is nuts.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I blew through what felt like a lot of bosses in one sitting yesterday. Felt like I had stumbled on an overpowered build or something. Knocked off Queen of Smiles, Mad Alchemist, Kraeken Giant guy (sunken keep), and False Jester in about two hours. Build is based mostly on pike skills and the haymaker weapon.

Edit: forgot to mention the reusable item that electrifies my attacks. For being part of the iron men and building some thing.

I have found many of the bosses to be fairly easy to take down. The one I am stuck on (the Witch) is kicking my ass, but I watched a tactics guide and the player was 25 levels above me, so maybe I am meant to go somewhere else. Problem is I am running out of options, and grinding 20 levels is going to be awfully slow.

FWIW I am playing as a cleric with pikes and hammers. I've had to divvy up stats a fair bit but the prayers are extremely effective in a lot of situations. My biggest problem is needing to juggle the item list through consumables and prayers while still fighting, but as long as I can keep up with that and not get impatient I have lots of options. One thing I can't figure out is the game makes reference to wisdom and magic scaling weapons, but I haven't found a single one (or at least one that I can use). It's a bit frustrating as it means I've had to pump strength as well.

(Also it seems like you're pretty much forced into doing so to get the higher weapon classes, at least until you have enough gray pearls to remove intervening stat boost nodes on the tree).

A little grinding tip - Coop play is your friend. Have a second character take the Stone Sellsword and immediately invite you into their game. You'll be over-leveled for the earlier areas, but the bosses are all nice for grinding and fairly quick to get to once you know what you are doing. Additionally, anytime that someone would find a unique item, you instead get a pouch, bundle, or bag of salt pending on the power of the item.

My one dip into co-op play caused me to probably be over-leveled for where I currently am (I just got the shadowflip brand) and I only went to early areas with my friend (Village of Smiles.)

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

A little grinding tip - Coop play is your friend. Have a second character take the Stone Sellsword and immediately invite you into their game. You'll be over-leveled for the earlier areas, but the bosses are all nice for grinding and fairly quick to get to once you know what you are doing. Additionally, anytime that someone would find a unique item, you instead get a pouch, bundle, or bag of salt pending on the power of the item.

My one dip into co-op play caused me to probably be over-leveled for where I currently am (I just got the shadowflip brand) and I only went to early areas with my friend (Village of Smiles.)

Nice tip but there is zero chance of me getting anyone else in my house to play this.

That's a shame. Can you invite a friend over? Are there other Goodjers nearby?

OR create a dummy character on another account and have that character basically exist to drag your main to boss fights. But that might be a bit more tedious than the conventional grinding (and way less fun.)

Yeah I have precisely zero gaming friends locally. Pity me!

If only the NYC ---> RI speedtrain was ever thing that anyone thought to build, I'd be there.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Yeah I have precisely zero gaming friends locally. Pity me!

Next time I head home to RI to visit my family I'll stop in

My first character was a bit of a mess, got stuck at The Third Lamb. Built a new one with an actual understanding of the game and I'm stuck at the same boss! Any ideas on this guy?

Blind_Evil wrote:

My first character was a bit of a mess, got stuck at The Third Lamb. Built a new one with an actual understanding of the game and I'm stuck at the same boss! Any ideas on this guy?

Defense matters in this game, at least against elemental attacks. Pack lots of upgraded lightning resist gear.

The first time I found him I was drastically underpowered but I was able to wander around and come back to him later. I can't recall exactly what I was able to complete but I feel like I made it all the way to Far Beach and then doubled back when I got stuck.

I finally managed to get past the Witch of the Lake last night after getting enough salt to transmute the Haymaker into a Wisdom based weapon and upgrade it to Level V. I have to two hand-it but it does roughly three times the damage of my prior weapon, has better range, a bigger hitbox, and much more speed. The difference is pretty astonishing, really. I've only got three areas (and a couple hidden spots) left to explore. I'm probably going to skip the hidden sections. Dark Souls 3 approaches!

I lost about two hours of progress by trying to back up my saves and then accidentally overwriting them with older ones. Whoops. Recovered some of it (including the second conversation with the Scarecrow and the Split Face mask - which is excellent and allowing me to wear the Doppelsoldner's gear.

Red Cages feels huge. I went pretty deep in and haven't seen a boss or a mini-sanctuary yet...

Blind_Evil wrote:

My first character was a bit of a mess, got stuck at The Third Lamb. Built a new one with an actual understanding of the game and I'm stuck at the same boss! Any ideas on this guy?

Yeah, that guy is pretty rough compared to the cakewalk of prior bosses. It gets about 5X harder under 50% life. Definitely be on the lookout for lightning resist. I had a lightning resist ring and a miracle to reduce magic damage.

I usually swap weapon buffs each fight when I need to make multiple attempts at a boss to see what hits hardest, and arcane hit way harder than holy on this guy. The consumable arcane weapon buffs should be pretty easy to find. Try them, and try to have a new one applied right before you get him down to the 50% mark.

Okay, so I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm stuck on the very first boss. The sodden knight or something like that. Here's my question.

Do I...
A. Grind out a few levels before getting to the boss to make it easier?
B. Change character (I'm a thief) to something with more armor and range?
C. Give up, because if I'm struggling with the first boss then I'm simply not good enough for this game.

Thanks for the help!

The first boss has been the hardest I've faced so far. Grinding will help, for sure, but because you're early I would experiment first with trying different strategies first.

The Sodden Knight is vulnerable to fire, and there are consumables that apply fire damage to your weapons that you can get fairly early. Failing that, try possibly starting as a different class or varying your loadout. You might find that using a different weapon will make a lot of difference. I intended to play a mage, but I fell in love with a big 2H sword and started over as a Knight. I've been cruising along since.

It took my a couple tries to beat the Sodden Knight. Every boss after I've gotten on the first go, and failing that, the second.

So don't despair!

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

It took my a couple tries to beat the Sodden Knight. Every boss after I've gotten on the first go, and failing that, the second.So don't despair!

The only bosses that have really given me trouble were the Mad Alchemist (with whom I was struggling to control the slime party), the Tree of Men (I hate platform puzzles in boss fights), and the Witch of the Lake (who is just hellacious, but once I upgraded the right items, went down quickly). In almost all cases finding the right protection and offensive gear was key. Low level upgrade items are easy enough to find that you can upgrade multiple pieces to deal with various situations.

Sliknik18 wrote:

Okay, so I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm stuck on the very first boss. The sodden knight or something like that.

The Sodden Knight was one of the toughest fights for me as well. You haven't had a chance to get used to the game or upgrade your gear and consumables yet, so you probably do pitiful damage and don't have many potions.

Thief might indeed be rough to start. A new class could help, or you might be fine just changing up your tactics. Try taking off or putting on some armor to see if you do better with more protection or more mobility. Do you have the dodge timing down yet? That's pretty key for that fight.

Thanks for the advice guys....I'm glad no one chose Item C for me. I'm still working on the timing some...I really need to balance the stamina with my evade/dodge better. He goes berserk at the end of the fight and that usually gets me.

I do recall seeing an item for sale that applies fire to your weapon. That should help too.

Thanks again!

Great game!
About 5 hours in playing Knight with upgraded gear and heavy endurance.
Still fat rolling, but I can take a lot more damage with plate.
On my way to finally take down that Mad Alchemist.
Good to see that so many are enjoying this game.
Certainly the biggest surprise of the year for me so far.
Will hold me over till Dark Souls III which I'm anxious to get.
Good luck everyone.

Sliknik18 wrote:

Thanks for the advice guys....I'm glad no one chose Item C for me. I'm still working on the timing some...I really need to balance the stamina with my evade/dodge better. He goes berserk at the end of the fight and that usually gets me.

I do recall seeing an item for sale that applies fire to your weapon. That should help too.

Thanks again!

So last night I decided to re-roll a Knight instead of my previous character (Thief), and beat the Sodden Knight first try! Maybe it suited my playstyle more, or maybe it's just an easier build, I don't know. Regardless, it felt good to move forward with the story.

Has anyone found a good map to use? I like to be somewhat efficient with my game time, and I think a map would help that greatly.

I've found that the early going isn't so large that you get lost. The Red Cages is the first area that feels really big to me, and that's not until after the Castle of Storms, which itself is many bosses past where you currently are.

I haven't looked for a map, but I'll see if I can dig something up...

The Fextralife page might have what you are looking for, in terms of trying to approach with efficiency. I'm enjoying playing this blind, so I won't post it in the thread, but a casual glance tells me that that site is pretty spoilery and has game progress routes that you can refer to to plan an efficient run, if that's your jam.

I found the game progress route page to be pretty useful when I got lost without being all that spoilery (save for highlighting some hidden optional areas. With the 2D perspective there aren't a lot of landmarks to navigate by so having something to refer to when I felt like I couldn't find anywhere new to go has saved me some precious time.

This morning I had the toughest boss fight yet in the game.

Spoiler:

The Tree of Men in The Hall of Red Cages. Took my probably in the range of 8-10 tries and cost me a fortune in lost gold. As soon as I threw on the blacksmith apron and the fire resistant charm and figured out the mechanics of how the fight works, he fell fairly quickly. Those first few attempts were brutal and short though.

Nothing has reached Rom the Vaccuous Spider levels of difficulty just yet, but this was the closest the game has managed to get to a FROM-like boss challenge. Haegar's Cavern or that pass near the gold mask religion seem to be the next logical places to explore.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

This morning I had the toughest boss fight yet in the game.

Spoiler:

The Tree of Men in The Hall of Red Cages. Took my probably in the range of 8-10 tries and cost me a fortune in lost gold. As soon as I threw on the blacksmith apron and the fire resistant charm and figured out the mechanics of how the fight works, he fell fairly quickly. Those first few attempts were brutal and short though.

Nothing has reached Rom the Vaccuous Spider levels of difficulty just yet, but this was the closest the game has managed to get to a FROM-like boss challenge. Haegar's Cavern or that pass near the gold mask religion seem to be the next logical places to explore.

I'm about 80% through and that was one of my top three frustrating fights so far.