Salt and Sanctuary Catch-All

I finished this morning. The last boss gave me fits last night, but as it so often goes I got a bit of time in this morning and finished him off the first try today. I think I probably should have picked the other ending as in hindsight it probably would have been more interesting.

I like hearing that there are ending choices.

I finally hit enough Endurance to be able to roll effectively in the Doppelsoldner's set (subbing out the Helm for the Split Mask.) Hager's Cavern as an area was pretty tough. I never did get that one gate open, but I did manage to find a way past it (not sure if it was the intended solution or just a happy accident.) Took out the boss there last night, and then the one in the swamps this morning.

Spoiler:

Both were much easier than that Tree of Man. Just found the ferryman...

I finally had some time today to binge and finish this up. I felt pretty overpowered by the end, but I'm guessing I was over leveled. I couldn't figure out where to go for a while, so I picked up an extra 10 or 15 levels just wandering around. My great hammer retribution paladin type build worked out great. I found an awesome miracle near the end that summoned a holy sword spirit to follow me around and mirror my attacks.

I am super pumped for the eventual Vita release. This will be a perfect travel game, and there are many different builds I would love to try in subsequent play throughs.

The game has a few glaring issues, but I loved it in spite of them. I had been tentatively excited for it since seeing a video on the alpha build a couple of years ago, but I was not expecting it to turn out this well. It was a perfect appetizer for Dark Souls 3. I will not be surprised if it ends up on my top 10 list at the end of the year.

Dyni wrote:

I finally had some time today to binge and finish this up. I felt pretty overpowered by the end, but I'm guessing I was over leveled. I couldn't figure out where to go for a while, so I picked up an extra 10 or 15 levels just wandering around. My great hammer retribution paladin type build worked out great. I found an awesome miracle near the end that summoned a holy sword spirit to follow me around and mirror my attacks.

I am super pumped for the eventual Vita release. This will be a perfect travel game, and there are many different builds I would love to try in subsequent play throughs.

The game has a few glaring issues, but I loved it in spite of them. I had been tentatively excited for it since seeing a video on the alpha build a couple of years ago, but I was not expecting it to turn out this well. It was a perfect appetizer for Dark Souls 3. I will not be surprised if it ends up on my top 10 list at the end of the year.

I'm thinking about picking this up particularly for the vita port.
Dark souls is just a tad bit too hard and goes against my feeling I'm not making enough progress in the game for the amount of time I spend. What glaring issues did you see with salt and sanctuary? In your opinion, more accessible that dark souls?

Thanks,
Chad

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?

Two *characters* later, he's down. Turns out I'm better as a mage than a heavy in this game.

chooka1 wrote:
Dyni wrote:

I finally had some time today to binge and finish this up. I felt pretty overpowered by the end, but I'm guessing I was over leveled. I couldn't figure out where to go for a while, so I picked up an extra 10 or 15 levels just wandering around. My great hammer retribution paladin type build worked out great. I found an awesome miracle near the end that summoned a holy sword spirit to follow me around and mirror my attacks.

I am super pumped for the eventual Vita release. This will be a perfect travel game, and there are many different builds I would love to try in subsequent play throughs.

The game has a few glaring issues, but I loved it in spite of them. I had been tentatively excited for it since seeing a video on the alpha build a couple of years ago, but I was not expecting it to turn out this well. It was a perfect appetizer for Dark Souls 3. I will not be surprised if it ends up on my top 10 list at the end of the year.

I'm thinking about picking this up particularly for the vita port.
Dark souls is just a tad bit too hard and goes against my feeling I'm not making enough progress in the game for the amount of time I spend. What glaring issues did you see with salt and sanctuary? In your opinion, more accessible that dark souls?

Thanks,
Chad

I think that the Dark Souls influence works very well in most areas, but a few of the ideas that they brought over don't work as well in 2D space as they do in an open 3D world. Though not overly prevalent in most areas, there are some booby traps that seem needlessly punishing. It's tough to see the triggers when the camera perspective is so far pulled out from your character, so they felt cheap. Spell casting is powerful, but spells and items are both mapped to the same quick menu, so swapping between spells and items is cumbersome. As others have pointed out in this thread already, the skill tree is large and sprawling, but functionally, it's just a stat dump for leveling up.

As to the difficulty, that completely depends on your feelings towards platformers. The combat is more forgiving than in a Souls game, but most of my deaths were from platforming sections. This is a platformer at heart, and that becomes more true the further into the game you get.

I'm not really sure if I'd call it more accessible. I'm a Souls veteran and a platforming fan, and I still died a lot. Maybe others can weigh in on that for you.

I found the bosses to be significantly easier than in the Souls games. Only a few really gave me any trouble, however there are some very tough non-boss encounters scattered around. Like Souls, sometimes the answer is to run past and live to fight another day.
I agree with Dyni's issues with the UI and with readability of the environment. In addition, while the platforming isn't exactly bad but there were a number of times where I'd jump to a ledge I was certain I was close enough to reach and just skate right through it to my doom. Another frustration was that getting stun-locked by single enemies was a rather frequent occurrence. Specifically jumps and grabs felt a little cheap. Enemies with grab attacks have significant tracking and little cooldown on those attacks. I would often get grabbed multiple times until I died as my character was stun-locked in his recovery animation.
I also encountered a number of physics bugs - I clipped through walls a couple times, and flying enemies are prone to doing crazy things like disappearing from screen and showing up somewhere else minutes later, or still being able to attack after death.

I want to stress that none of this was game-breaking (though getting stuck in a wall one time during a boss fight was not exactly minor) and in addition to Souls fans I think anyone who loved Symphony of the Night might be able to get some satisfaction out of this game.

I'll add in that I've had a few non-gamer friends play it co-op and they've all had a blast. I would say it is fairly accessible. One big difference between it and a Soulsborne game is that it isn't particularly opaque. I definitely agree with all of the other assessments. It is a fun game with some flaws, and though it does borrow heavily from From, it doesn't lean in on the obscurity / challenge aspect.

In regards to accessibility: While the skill tree has gotten some flak for being very plain, a positive to it is that if you are new to the game style but want certain weapon types or want certain magic its structure will naturally cause you build your stats in a direction that is roughly beneficial to the effectiveness of those skills. Contrast that to the poor unknowing sap who, deciding they want to play a defensive tank, puts everything in Resistance, or the person who pumps dexterity and can't figure out why they roll so damn slowly.

I continue to grind away at this, though I am now struggling with the Disemboweled Husk. Not sure why I can't deal with his attacks, but I seem to always end up in the "let me shoot you 7 times with the hand howitzer I carry" range. Even with the 100% fire shield on, it makes me die a lot.

I probably need to better adjust my gear.

I stuck close to him, and rolled through prior to those attacks. Staying in close range is the key to that battle. He was also weak against holy damage, if memory serves.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

I stuck close to him, and rolled through prior to those attacks. Staying in close range is the key to that battle. He was also weak against holy damage, if memory serves.

Yeah, I try to make sure I'm close in, but the random nature of the "i'll fire up and crap rains down on you" attack seems to be best avoided by getting away from him. This gets me into this blasting range every time. So it's just me not planning correctly.

Oh, and on one attempt, I blew all my sacred page items because I forgot to switch to the flask heals. So there's that. Yay me!

Tyrian wrote:
TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

I stuck close to him, and rolled through prior to those attacks. Staying in close range is the key to that battle. He was also weak against holy damage, if memory serves.

Yeah, I try to make sure I'm close in, but the random nature of the "i'll fire up and crap rains down on you" attack seems to be best avoided by getting away from him. This gets me into this blasting range every time. So it's just me not planning correctly.

Oh, and on one attempt, I blew all my sacred page items because I forgot to switch to the flask heals. So there's that. Yay me!

Finally got him. Finding a better route TO him was handy, as half my frustration was getting killed by the armor mite or the pale witches en route. The key seemed to be actually using a lightning shockstone. Maybe it just added enough extra dmg that I was able to get over the hump, or the billionth time was the charm?

Onward! The next zone! The... mire of stench. Oh. Yay. Blighttown? Blighttown.

Congrats! I wonder what that better path was (I never figured out how to open the door there, so I always ended up going all the way up then dropping down on the other side of the door. It was a pain, and I'm thankful it didn't take me many tries.)

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

Congrats! I wonder what that better path was (I never figured out how to open the door there, so I always ended up going all the way up then dropping down on the other side of the door. It was a pain, and I'm thankful it didn't take me many tries.)

Thanks! I don't know why this one and the mad alchemist were so tough for me. I've one shot most of the other bosses.

I was going up from the sanctuary, over to the disappearing blocks and across to the platform there (I don't recall what was on it), and then jumping off to the left. 99% of the time, you'll grab the ledge of the wooden platform near those two floaty sceaming wraith things, and then you can drop down and run straight to the boss.

Spoiler:

You didn't get the cellar key from back in the Hall of Red Cages? I think it was in a section you could only get to after getting to the cavern, so it looked like backtracking, but wasn't.

Blew through a buncha bosses again today. Seems progress likes to come in waves in this game. Husk, Stench, and Witch all down within an hour of play while girlfriend was getting ready. Didn't die to any of them, but did bell home because I've kinda been stumbling on them accidentally.

Coveted killed me twice, took it as a sign to get ready for the day myself.

Sure wanna finish this before DS3 in Tuesday...

I am about 2/3 rds way in my NG+ run (and will stay there until after DS3).

First let me say at begging I thought the game was good but I was distracted with life and The Division. Last week when I really got to dive into the thing I started absolutely loving it. I would certainly put it right in there with DS2/BB.

Difficulty - I think this game is not quite as balanced at DS which in a way is not a bad thing. I think it really allows you to modify the difficulty a bit. I think this is two main factors
1. Weapons. Now DS has multiple weapons and yes some are better then others. However, they are all pretty close if you really look at it. In S&S I do think all weapons are viable however, I think Great Hammers (possibly great swords) allow for much easier game play. Most bosses are quite a bit easier if you can stay at distance and hit from range in this game than DS's.
2. Knowledge - I went through the first run blind (well until the last boss that I looked up if I missed any optional bosses). However, on NG+ Looking up simply boss information before the bosses has changed my view allot. I was shocked out how much difference a Strike (Hammer) weapon can be vs a Slash (Sword/Axe) can be on bosses early on. I was doing some testing in NG+ and literally equal level Hammer/Axe vs a Boss and 1 or the other can do nearly 1/2 damage. Elemental weaknesses also but I think I am just more use to those.

I would do research and lookup because there are 109128301298 different builds you can go. However, If you wanted an easier time in the game I do think it is possible to a point if you find an optimal build and use a Greathammer/Sword. Look up the boss information and use the guides etc. Also will save you some wandering time I had to do figuring out where to go. Find out if/how much magic to go etc. Lots of basics I have not tried to see how hard they are so hard for me to comment. I have not even attempted to use any type of spell casting yet.

Now that does not mean in anyway the game will be "Easy". With this type of game all bosses will always be dangerous. They can 1-3 shot you even in heavy armor. So learning the bosses attack and when to dodge etc. will often be necessary.

Made progress over the weekend, once I got remote play working.

Dried King, Bloodless Prince, Murietia Mal, The Covetous, Stench Most Foul, Ronin Cran, The Inquisitor, The Third Lamb, and Carsejaw the Cruel all down.

I dropped down into a reeeeeally deep pit, and then had to use a Calling Horn to get out. I also got all the way to the top of the vanishing platformy bits in the Pitchwood (seriously, screw that place).

Hopefully, I'll finish it out tonight and be ready for DkS3 tomorrow!

I'm likely going to miss finishing this before DSIII, but I intend to swing back in upon completing my stay in Happyland (which, I presume, is the name of the fantasy world DSIII takes place on.)

Tyrian wrote:

Hopefully, I'll finish it out tonight and be ready for DkS3 tomorrow!

Do note as per steam DkS3 comes out today at 7 p.m. EST (12:00 GMT).

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

I'm likely going to miss finishing this before DSIII, but I intend to swing back in upon completing my stay in Happyland (which, I presume, is the name of the fantasy world DSIII takes place on.)

IMAGE(http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/39100000/MLP-Dark-Souls-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-39167501-1280-800.jpg)

I died so many times trying to ride that unicorn, but eventually I went online and found a good strategy to cheese it.

escher77 wrote:
Tyrian wrote:

Hopefully, I'll finish it out tonight and be ready for DkS3 tomorrow!

Do note as per steam DkS3 comes out today at 7 p.m. EST (12:00 GMT).

Yeah, I know. But I bought a physical copy. So, Amazon is scheduled to delivered tomorrow. Not much I can do about that!

Tyrian wrote:
escher77 wrote:
Tyrian wrote:

Hopefully, I'll finish it out tonight and be ready for DkS3 tomorrow!

Do note as per steam DkS3 comes out today at 7 p.m. EST (12:00 GMT).

Yeah, I know. But I bought a physical copy. So, Amazon is scheduled to delivered tomorrow. Not much I can do about that!

Sooo, since Amazon failed me and won't deliver until tomorrow, I continued on in S&S. Alllllmost done, I think. Killed the Forgotten King, and the Kraken Dragon or whatever. Now in the land of confetti.

Tyrian wrote:
Tyrian wrote:
escher77 wrote:
Tyrian wrote:

Hopefully, I'll finish it out tonight and be ready for DkS3 tomorrow!

Do note as per steam DkS3 comes out today at 7 p.m. EST (12:00 GMT).

Yeah, I know. But I bought a physical copy. So, Amazon is scheduled to delivered tomorrow. Not much I can do about that!

Sooo, since Amazon failed me and won't deliver until tomorrow, I continued on in S&S. Alllllmost done, I think. Killed the Forgotten King, and the Kraken Dragon or whatever. Now in the land of confetti.

Spoiler:

You are really really close. I would recommend finishing even if DS3 gets here today.

Game is now available on Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/28...

Aaaand Wishlisted.

The PC port is pretty flawless as far as I can tell.

Good stuff.

Tyops wrote:

The PC port is pretty flawless as far as I can tell.

Good stuff.

Has anyone double-dipped? I'm curious whether this would be a better experience on my big TV via PS4, or on my PC. Controller is an option in both instances.

Coldstream wrote:
Tyops wrote:

The PC port is pretty flawless as far as I can tell.

Good stuff.

Has anyone double-dipped? I'm curious whether this would be a better experience on my big TV via PS4, or on my PC. Controller is an option in both instances.

I doubled dipped.. plays great on the PC.. the art style works on the small screen as effectively as the big screen..plus you can use the IMO superior Xbox One controller.

Spoiler:

The Witch of the Lake was just brutal.. I kept getting caught by the barrage skill.. it was tricky because even if one ball catches you you will get stunlocked and then the rest of the barrage wipes you out.. this was even in my full Arcane resist gear plus the arcane resist ring.. god forbid you mistake her one move for the other and get caught in mid air as she fires it off. Best advice I can give is stay under here or slightly behind her as much as you can and be aggressive as possible.. the longer the fight goes the more chance something bad will happen.

Beat it twice since getting it (once with a bruiser in heavy armour, once with a mage), got all the achievements except for the one that comes from beating that first boss on the boat (with needing to redo character creation every attempt, that's way too tedious for me).

I was really happy with this except for the Pitchwoods area. The platforming there was pretty poor, but it was much easier on the second go around so I guess that's something.

For that boss Gameguru

Spoiler:

...and for other bosses that have a barrage-like attack, the easiest thing to do was stay relatively close and when they're about to start that attack move toward them and roll under. Some of those bosses attacks dont turn facing so you dodge the whole thing, if the attack does track to the other side it's usually not very far.

Personally, it might just be the builds I went with but...

Spoiler:

The bosses I struggled the most with, besides the last boss, were the Sodden Knight and the Disemboweled Husk. They weren't that hard but they definitely took me the most tries. I suppose Ronin was pretty tough to find openings on as a mele character as well.