Dark Souls III Catch-All 2.0

So.. Blade of The Darkmoon covenant.

I am currently SL130 and have been doing both DLCs while wearing the Darkmoon pin/sign. Turns out you I get summoned somewhat regularly and all over the game (rarely near the location I'm in). So far I have 12 (useless) concords.

Yeah, also ran around with the darkmoon covenant in my new full playthrough. The summon rate has certainly improved from release - especially considering it was pretty close to zero there.

Just finished both DLCs. It certainly hits all the usual DLC checks in a Souls game, including some brutally hard bosses.
These DLCs are maybe not at the level of Bloodbornes or DS2s DLC (though in particular with the DS2 DLC, I think some of the perceived quality comes from improving so much on the vanilla game). DS3 DLC pretty much 'just' continues the same high quality.

I don't want to live in a world with no more Dark Souls games :/ Can we burn it already?

Polished off the TRC DLC today. It was good, I much preferred it to the Painted World, better scope and lots of PvP fun, really gave the ol' Point Down a work out.

Perhaps it was because I was in NG++ but I did feel there were a few too many sections where you just had to deal with multiple simultaneous really, really tough monsters (here's 3 Harald Legion immediately followed by... 3 Harald Legion!!!). Anyway I got bored of struggling with some sections and just summoned help. Perhaps if I'd been in a NG this wouldn't have been so tough. Either way that part of the level design felt a bit disappointing.

I also broke my boss soloing rule and summoned help for these too. Although I could see myself beating Gael, Midir would be a stretch.

Overall the DLC has not shifted my perception that DS3 is the weakest but most polished of the three DS games. Eventually once I've had some time I'll do an SL1 run. Doing that completely changed my perception of DS2 (greatly increasing my estimation of it) so perhaps I'll revise my opinion of DS3 after a future SL1 run.

I'm on NG and not all the way through the DLC but I agree that the Ringed City areas feel painfully hard, specifically after the Demon Prince. I found the Dreg Heaps to be reasonable in terms of difficulty and kind of fun but I don't really like having forced running sections in a Souls game, I prefer sneaking and exploring. Doesn't help that there also seem to be huge distances between bonfires. I think they have a bad habit of ratcheting up the difficulty at the end of DLCs, but at least I don't think this is as bad as the frozen pony area in the final DS2 DLC.

I'm playing the second DLC as well. I am swearing a lot. A lot.

Their concept of "hard" in this DLC seems to just be, "lets put a bunch of areas you need to sprint through."
Which is less challenge, more annoying to me.

Taharka wrote:

"lets put a bunch of areas you need to sprint through."

Which bits? The floor zombies and angels can be killed by killing whatever is summoning/controlling them. There doesn't seem to be much else that would be all that productive sprint past.

DanB wrote:
Taharka wrote:

"lets put a bunch of areas you need to sprint through."

Which bits? The floor zombies and angels can be killed by killing whatever is summoning/controlling them. There doesn't seem to be much else that would be all that productive sprint past.

Correct... but you need to find those creatures first. The one for the first angel is easy, the next two are hidden, and harder to get at. The summoners in the next area are super high health and toughness (at least, on NG++), and hard to kill while you have archers and other summons attacking you, and they don't stay dead until...

Spoiler:

You kill the Church Spear guy

Then there's the dragon...

And that's not even counting some areas that are doable, but hard. I'm thinking of the area with something like 7 Harald Knights plus some of the monks and other adds in a very short area.

In general, though I haven't finished the second DLC, I actually like Ashes better than Ringed. That's not to say I think either of them are great, but between the two, I think enemy placement and bosses are less lazy (in general) in Ashes. The world is more interesting in Ringed, though.

Finding and kiling a thing to stop the continuous spawns (or continuous other annoyance) is a not an unused trope in previous DS games. And the running from dragon fire stuff has been used in most of the previous outings too.

I didn't find them annoying (or rather no more annoying than in previous games)

Just picked this up from the Steam Summer Sale. I have been watching videos that show up when I search Youtube for "Dark Souls 3 tips" Found some good tips.

Anyone have other things I should watch before I dig into dying?

farley3k wrote:

Just picked this up from the Steam Summer Sale. I have been watching videos that show up when I search Youtube for "Dark Souls 3 tips" Found some good tips.

Anyone have other things I should watch before I dig into dying?

Avoid heavy armour (although they did slightly fix it). Straight swords are OP.

That about covers it

DanB wrote:
farley3k wrote:

Just picked this up from the Steam Summer Sale. I have been watching videos that show up when I search Youtube for "Dark Souls 3 tips" Found some good tips.

Anyone have other things I should watch before I dig into dying?

Avoid heavy armour (although they did slightly fix it). Straight swords are OP.

That about covers it

Magic and pyromancy starting = hard mode

You can add it all later if you want so if it were me, start with a warrior like class.

Also, my run as a paladin was pretty useless. I have heard they fixed this since my first run, just lightning damage did almost nothing in comparison to other ways to modify weapons.

Edit: I am just a sucker for Paladin and Miracles though....

farley3k wrote:

Just picked this up from the Steam Summer Sale. I have been watching videos that show up when I search Youtube for "Dark Souls 3 tips" Found some good tips.

Anyone have other things I should watch before I dig into dying?

Start as knight. Comes with longsword and knight shield which has 100 block. Looks cool to boot.

Cool boots? I am in! Knight it is.

I'm always a fan of the fast builds in this series. Dual welded weapons in 3 are kinda hit or miss, but the katana build is very fun.

Play the game.

Nicely the game seems kind of short (30 hours listed on How long to beat.com) and while I I am sure that my play through will be much longer because I will die a lot it is at least short enough that I might play a different build or two.

I'm still holding out for a "Prepare to Die" style edition, some day....

As I am watching tips for newbies videos I found this one.

I like how he seems to have taken a bunch of cold medicine before doing the video. He is so calm

It does sound like some walk through of an 80's word processing machine.

An equally calm sounding DS expert who is fun to listen to.

I think it is a bit sh*tty that the base game and the dlc included deluxe edition get discounts but the dlc/season pass dont. Seems to reward new players but not people who own the game from release.

I only got a hour or so in this weekend and most of that was spent dying but all the dying told me what DS3 does great - fast reloading In many games I feel like the punishment for dying is an eternity while the game loads from the last save/checkpoint but I never felt that way in DS3. I died but I got back in the fight quite quickly. That was quite nice.

Brownypoints wrote:

I think it is a bit sh*tty that the base game and the dlc included deluxe edition get discounts but the dlc/season pass dont. Seems to reward new players but not people who own the game from release.

Yeah been that way multiple times with sales.

Just makes you feel stupid for being a day 1 supporter.

$20.99 is the lowest I could find for the PC season pass. The individual packs are also discounted. (And I think you can get 5% more off with code PCGAMES5OFF but don't hold me to that.)

DS3 in a nutshell (slightly sweary)
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/sYPn2OM.jpg)

Haha. Oh the chosen one. Always just some naked f*ck with a stick.

Well... that was anticlimactic.
In one session, I went from being stuck on Darkeater Midir (because I'm tacking him for the first time in NG++) to killing him and the final DLC boss.
So... I guess that's it. No more Dark Souls.
It's been a long, frustrating, rewarding ride.

Taharka wrote:

Well... that was anticlimactic.
In one session, I went from being stuck on Darkeater Midir (because I'm tacking him for the first time in NG++) to killing him and the final DLC boss.

I had a similar experience on DS1. I did the closing 16 hours of gameplay in a single sitting and when it ended it seemed very anti-climactic

I started a pyro build. Damn, they really reversed the whole magic/pyro is easy mode.

I have been really enjoying this so far. I have gotten to the second boss - well I walked in the room and died but I saw him!

One question - am I hurting myself by playing in short stints? For the little I played DS2 I found that enemies stopped appear after being beaten a few times. Since I sucked and I often lost my souls, but then the bad guys stopped coming so I couldn't really get more souls to level up.

Will that happen again?