What games are you playing 2014?

[Fudozukushi]

It is because Old Iron King is a complete dice roll?  That's why I loath Iron Keep on melee.

Dark Souls 2: Speaking of which!  back to Big McLargeHuge's adventures.  Old Iron King was a half-dozen fucking dice rolls including three times dying to the awful hit detection.  Speaking of awful hit detection: his arms.  They have some bizarre ass hitbox that ISN'T the whole arm.  I don't mean up near the shoulders either, like the bottom parts of his forearms don't have a hitbox it's all on the top half.  If a weapon's low enough to te ground it will blantently miss as I just saw from trying it with the Gyrm Greatshield. 

Speaking of Grym, I genocided them from the Doors of Pharros.  I got 6 hammers, 3 greatshields 7 armors, 7 gloves, 7 boots, 3 greathelms, around 14 chunks, a whole tone of magic and mundane stones and..... 0 normal helms.  The only item I BLOODY WANTED.  Sure the chunks were a bonus but CRIPES that's over a hundred of the pricks.  And the droprate isn't even low which makes it more insulting.

Whatever.  Killed Authority the Royal Rat with only one death.  I died to the Sinner's Rise archers because I was off fighting cats and forgot about them.  Died on the run to the Lost Sinner because I only do this melee now so I forget the exploding mummy near the stairs exists when I attack the abomination.  Lost Sinner gets nothing.

Over to the castle, over to the Dark Chasm and ughhh didn't do Black Gulch?  Whatever.  Over there... worm sends me off into the great dead beyond because of course.  Whatever, to the Dark Chasm!  Hey the Ironclad Phantom bounces off Havels!  Too bad he has magic and this somehow doesn't cause him to deflection stagger and instead he can immediately chain three blood attacks off of it instantly.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Also the actual Ironclad enemies in iron keep have a kick.  Who knew?

[Sierra]

Nah, just because fire magic & slashing weapon vs armor jerks is generally haha no. But it turns out the sword is boss enough to kill everyone in two hits anyway and also there's POIZN.

Sometimes Velstadt will also forgo his appalling array of murderrific combos to just kick you right in the face. It was several playthroughs before I saw this.

Man I don't even bother with the Dark Chasm unless it gives me something I want. That quest is just a pain in the ass.

[Fudozukushi]

Have you seen the Lion Warrior's multi-hit combo too?

[Captain K.]

Hahaha, oh no, if an NPC dies EVER you get the Sin for it.  You can't actually do Pate/Creighton because it'll still give you sin even if you do nothing.  And there's no way to remove sin without getting bluecopped, and that only works til you're back down to 9 sin.  Even if you invade the traitor you still get sin.

This is not true.  I killed Pate to save Creighton and had no sin when I talked to Velka later.

[Fudozukushi]

Cromwell doesn't remove sin, he resets NPC hostility.

[Fenrir]

Roguelike Souls 2: Died a few more times. I think I can finish the game in 5 hours or so now, so this is getting close to an actual roguelike experience without the randomness.
I went back to hammers and oh my god they are so much better than all these crappy weapons. I'm totally biased but I'd rank melee weapons like this in PvE, ignoring availability:


From What The Hell Tier
Santiers Spear, Great Hammers

Top Tier
Hammers, Ultra Greatswords

High Tier
Greatswords, Regular Swords, Rapiers, Halberds

Mid Tier
Whips, Fist Weapons, Curved Swords, Spears

Ultra low Tier
Scythes, Twinblades, Axes, Greataxes, Daggers


Not sure but probably "Mid" and "High" and "Dunno" respectively Tier
Katanas, Great Curved Swords, long Greataxes

[Sierra]

Hammers/great hammers really are absurdly good in DS2. Why is MACE one of the best things ever? That's just crazy.

Have you seen the Lion Warrior's multi-hit combo too?

Not that I can recall.

DS2: Not!Sinner has linked the fire (presumably).

The sword actually puts out some pretty decent damage (+5 & fire, 20ish in all relevant stats = ~610 attack power). This doesn't mean it's a good weapon. It's slower than I'd like and seems to degrade in condition more quickly than it should. But it's perfectly fine as a melee alternate to POIZN and setting things on fire with my brain. Oh, and the self-inflicted damage also kicks in if you use it to destroy breakable objects. It does not trigger if you strike indestructible scenery. Backstabs don't seem to set it off either for some reason.

I'm now pretty sure that "Fire Bonus" stat in the character screen does nothing more than contribute a flat increase to pyromancy damage on a 1-to-1 basis. So yeah pump both mental stats to pro caster levels and you may get an extra hundred or so damage out of your fire spells. WOO. (Or at least this was what some minor testing with Fireball indicated--chuck a few at basic Forest goons to observe numbers, go grab a couple levels to boost Fire Bonus a modest amount, toss more Fireballs and see damage increased about the same amount.) Pyromancy's functional as principle offense if you just have a mess of spell slots for it; that is probably the way you're supposed to go with it since casting stats have so little impact, quantity over quality. Combustion/Great Combustion still the most efficient way to deal fire damage, except the range is shorter here (you had a couple feet to hit with in DS1, but you really have to be right up in someone's grill for it to connect now) and has a bad tendency to push enemies out of the second blast's range. D'oh. Spam away vs immovable bosses, though.

Have I mentioned how convenient it is that the Sinner's mask has apertures for my pigtails? Because that's just fantastic.

[Fenrir]

That's all so cool.

So as I see it pyromancy is basically like in Dark Souls 1 except better balanced.

Roguesouls 2: Got the Murakumo in a cleric playthrough, got it to +8, immediately died against the Ruin Sentinels, as the first one fell down and I got helicoptered by all three of them down below. I just realized I could have used all these lightning spears to snipe them from above.... Shit...

Great Curved Swords seemed decent but not amazing
One handed = Not strong enough
Two handed = Not a good enough moveset
Power stance = Cool but try raising 2 Murakumos at that point in the game
But to be fair I only had 20 dex. (The Murakumo has an A Scaling in dex)

[Luther Lansfeld]

Super Metroid - Started playing this. I've never played a Metroid game, but I like both Megaman and Castlevania so I figured I'd enjoy it. I just got the High Jump Boots.

Civ V- Playing as Babylon. Currently conquering Germany after they attacked me for no reason.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm still playing Soul Nomad of course. Game is coming along quite nicely. Not headed for an all-time favourite by any means, but pleasant enough certainly, much more to my taste than Disgaea was.

Phoenix Wright JFA - Finished a replay of this.
-Yeah, this game is way longer than the first one (at least without 1-5), my 3DS game clock says it took me 17 hours instead of 10. Last case is huge, the middle two are as long as 1-4 was.
-It's also a much tougher game. The most recent games I've played in the series (DD, AAI, and 1) are all much easier by comparison. A lot of things I really had to think about. A few where the game even obfuscates deliberately... mostly Engarde's psyche-locks which I can't really begrudge since it is such a crucial point of the case series and I can see very solid narrative reasons for that one to be the way it is. Phoenix is obviously struggling himself with the truth, and has to first present something which is wrong but kinda maybe seems like it can be right before ruling that out and going on to the right thing.
-I like what psyche-locks bring to the investigation for sure, and I like that they recharge health. I don't like that they are literally the only thing that recharges health in the game. If you do the last psyche-lock badly you go into the next trial day with 50% health, yikes. Just encourages save abuse. I am really glad DD moved on from the punitive system the original trilogy (and especially 2 and 3) had.
-Nothing new here but I really dig the cases in this game, minus the first. 2-3 with its devilishly humourous cast and amazing villain showdown, and 2-4... well, is 2-4. It is generally seen as the "best" Phoenix Wright case and while I'm not sure I agree - it isn't always terribly fun especially with the way the second trial day seems to be a stall for time, and I'm a bit lukewarm on Edgeworth in this case - it is still excellent.

Not sure if I'll bother with T&T this time around.


Super Mario Bros. 1 - Played through this on a whim. Breezed for a while, then world 7 was tough. Then world 8 was the devil. This game is great classic fun and a huge nostalgia trip for me whenever I pull it out. The physics are punitive compared to later Marios but it's amazing how much this game got right.

[dude789]

I'm still playing Soul Nomad of course. Game is coming along quite nicely. Not headed for an all-time favourite by any means, but pleasant enough certainly, much more to my taste than Disgaea was.

Be sure to play the optional storyline once you beat it for the first time. A lot of the best plot stuff is saved until that second playthrough.

[Cmdr_King]

I don't want to hype the Demon Path too much, I don't think it will be your cup of tea.  But it's... interesting, in a "I like that a game is acknowledging this" sort of way.

[Fenrir]

Roguesouls 2:

Did a Katana run! DIED BECAUSE OF FUCKING DWARF GANKING NEAR THE GARGOYLES
I killed some Alonne knights, got the jester hat and Covetous Gold Serpent Ring+1, and got a Blacksteel Katana drop right after equipping them.

The Blacksteel Katana is gotten late but it's very nice! The moveset is very similar to a regular sword (the power stance is the same), but maybe a little faster, and there's a monstrous S scaling in dex. My blacksteel katana+7 had 315 attack at 50 dex.

Until I got the katana I used a winged spear+4 and it was totally outclassed by a regular mace +0.


My usual playstyle has changed a bit.

- I used bandits almost exclusively before, as they have extremely bad magic stats and I don't need magic.
I'm leaning more towards clerics now. They start with that OP mace, and the early miracles are always welcome, whether I spend 10 levels towards getting lightning spear or I stay with Heal. A cleric can go and kill the Dragonrider right away and ignoring the Forest of Giant, the bandit has a harder time.

- Also I always start by killing Maughlin like I am the most racist Dark Souls player in the world. His armor is very cool and has the passive ability of granting a bunch of extra souls. Judge all you want. I've sacrificed so many damsels in Spelunky, my soul is lost already.

- I've also discovered that the random face generator at character creation isn't very random after all. So I use it to create the same fairly unique character every game without it being a pain.

[Sierra]

I think the random generation is actually variations of whatever option you started with? Or at least that's just a guess from me also seeing a lot of similar results turn up again and again.

Third-Person Shooter Souls: So as much as I need that Ring of Blades so fucking bad, I probably need more levels before I can get it. That means killing the next wussiest boss around and eating his soul. Onward to Heide's! Oh ugh the knights each chew through like twenty arrows before dying. That's only a 50% net profit on souls! Okay, loot everything and flip switches then restock and run past everyone the second time. Dragonrider is Dragonrider, it took like sixty arrows to kill him but I was never in any real danger so whatevs. I probably shouldn't eat his soul because I might want his bow someday? Oh wait I'm too stupid for Straid to talk to me OM NOM NOM.

Boss fights are so long now that the completely useless Ring of Restoration actually has a noticeable effect. Pursuer chunks me once at the start of the fight and before I slip up a second time I'm at full health again. Not because the ring is markedly effective but because bow damage. You guys. But now I get twenty extra damage per shot and that makes a lot of enemies drop just one arrow faster so totally worth the trouble to get as early as possible.

O-man, No Man's Wharf, blah blah blah. These are both easy even with crap offense. I don't have a lockstone though so I'll have to come back later for Gavlan.

Skelemob gets my first death. It's actually easy at first, as the three arrows a full stamina bar gets me are enough to put down a single representative of each mob and they don't close range quickly enough to bother me. But then the horror the horror pops up and they move too fast for me to get off a full barrage and then face full of spikes. So that was terrifying even when I won. Also apparently pyroskelly's explosions hurt his friends? Had never noticed before.

Second death is to a crypt jerk in Earthen Peak. He knocks me into a poison jar, I kill him, then die trying to chug an estus flask before status eats me. That's just humiliating. Amazingly no deaths to Mytha though.

Deaths 3 & 4 & 5: the pit. Jumping to deliberate death to get Maughlin to give me nudist armor; jumping down a second time because I idiotically recovered souls before talking to him (this always happens); jumping fail while genuinely trying to navigate it. Gravity is my worst foe so far.

The Bastile looms, but I'm scared so I want more boss souls to eat. Where to go? Well, I thought the Gutter would be a problem because can't fire a bow and hold a torch at the same time, right? But whatever, you know the place and you can just evade almost all combat. The Rotten's dark sword blast hurts like a motherfucker, but whatever he's still the Rotten. Sadly I can't chow down on his soul because I need it to get through Shrine of Winter (as I discovered last run, it's having the Old One souls in inventory that opens the door, not lighting the primal bonfires; so the latter really means nothing at all).

Sentinels eat it on the first try. Aw yeah. I use the rewards to buy the butterfly armor, because I think that I cannot properly refrain from floating like a butterfly while stinging like a bee, yeah? And I'd never actually tried it in combat before, figured maybe there's a side roll when you're actually locked on to someone so it doesn't totally nuke your capacity to dodge? Nope, dodge button makes you leap forward no matter what direction you mash unless you already have forward momentum from a previous jump in which case then you roll some direction, hopefully it's the right one. I really shouldn't have walked into the gargoyle room with this on. (I won anyway.)

Re: Bastile key acquisition, apparently you can lock onto the dogs from atop the ladder. ...Well, that's much easier! But Lost Sinner scares me so I'm heading to the Shaded Woods now. The ambush room was a dreadful prospect but it turns out you can shoot down the second-floor doors and headshot dudes from the ground. This aggros everybody at once, but who cares because the exit's still open. Then you pull the switch and the door slides open dramatically to reveal one lone basilisk who goes down looking like a chump for backing up nobody.

DEX is 40 and the shortbow is at +7. I might just leave it there, getting along well enough and killed some of the worst shit the first half of the game can throw at you, should maybe just save materials for Hunter's Blackbow later (I hate to waste the titanite chunks given how stupidly scarce they are outside of bellbroing, which I'm not even going to attempt this time for obvious reasons). I don't even know what's happening with the rest of my levels. I guess just lots more END so I can get extra shots or something (probably pointless since no boss'll let you take more than a couple safe shots at a time anyway).

Oh, I forgot to mention I got hit by one of those throwing axes for the first time the other day. The visual for this is hilarious. You know how when you got shot with an arrow, the shaft juts out from your character model for a few seconds? Like that, except there's a gigantic battle axe shoved all the way through your cranium.

[Fenrir]

I just know that if you don't change anything and select random faces, you get the exact same options every time you start the game
But if you change your hair, you get 6 different options than these ones.
Even if you select "random faces", then cancel and select it again, you also get 6 different options
And even if you select "Start over character creation" you also get 6 different options.

I think the game takes the face you have chosen right now, and then moves a few sliders a little according to its stored numbers for RNG calculation. (Usually with absolutely disgusting results)


You can always raise Int, talk to Straid as an intelligent dude then Soul Vessel that int away. Apparently he still considers you as an intelligent human being if you do that.

I really need to try a bow / get hit with an axe throw later
My favourite enemy, after the giant ant, is the dwarf who dual wields axes, but decides instead to throw them at you then punch you to death.

[Sierra]

I think the game takes the face you have chosen right now, and then moves a few sliders a little according to its stored numbers for RNG calculation. (Usually with absolutely disgusting results)

Yeah, that was my impression, and yeah, most of them are 100% OH MY GAH. I'm always surprised when something decent turns up and what I always settle on is "Huh, that looks just a little different from [base face], but it's not a grotesque mockery of life so I'll roll with it."

And yeah, definitely soul vesseling Straid into compliance eventually just because I must have that gesture. This is our concern, dude.

[Fudozukushi]

@ Shrine of Winter Souls. Did you forget to grab the Great Soul in DDF chamber?  Because her soul doesn't count.  I've eaten or spent all four Old One souls and gotten through the Shrine without soul-busting it.

Dark Souls 2: I did not play this Wednesday nope.  There was no experience so awful on my Belmont run that I stopped playing immediately due to sheer bullshit.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Link's Awakening - Chasing musical instruments with my pet Chain Chomp, let's do this baby

[Pyro]

Hey. That Chain Chomp belongs to someone else. Chain Chomp Theft is a CRIME.

[Luther Lansfeld]

The chain chomp is happier in the swamp, chain chomp captivity is immoral

On the plus side, the baby chain chomp now has a ribbon

[Fenrir]

Cid, did you know that you can snipe Dragonrider without even entering the boss room, from around the first switch?

Just snipe him a few dozen times. Then he will turn towards you with his shield raised and you can't hurt him anymore. But he has 1 HP left at that point so lol.

Dark Souls.

[Sierra]

I'd never tried, figured it was one of those times the game wouldn't generate the enemy from so far away to streamline processing. That's awesome. (Apparently the speedrun tactic is to leave the outer rings down and have him charge off the edge.)

DS2: I gave in and farmed peasants for titanite chunks because--

Death 6: Smelty is an asshole. No seriously, look at him, I can't be the only one who's thought it. I hate him and I hate his ass-face.

Death 7: Pursuer mk 2 is a fat man in a little coat.

I'm out of poison arrows after that failed attempt, but I need that ring so bad. I do less than 100 damage a shot to him and it's not consistently safe to try for two in between his attacks, so I have to go track down Gavlan. I already bought his twenty or so basic stock in prepping for this attempt, though...Hey Gavlan, you sell an infinite supply of poison arrows in Doors of Pharros, don't you? Please tell me you do.

...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN_HVup9oOg

YUS.

Almost immediately this becomes my first resort for anything that's not a one-or-twoshottable mook. Pretty much everything gets poisoned in exactly four arrows and the damage over time is something like an extra thousand damage. I barely have to shoot dudes anymore, I can just poison them and dodge until they fall over (this is more cost-efficient, too!) I got some mileage out of this in Not!Sinner mode too, but you know dudes can run right out of that cloud before the status lands. Arrows basically never miss!

Deaths 8 & 9: Chariot = fuuuuuuuuck. I need three shots to put down one resurrectable goon. Are they going to give me the chance to shoot three times before closing range? Hell no. I die a couple times just trying to kill the first necromancer; when this finally works, I stand by the front door and whittle the chariot down one arrow at a time until he falls into the pit. Victory!

Remaining bosses for the day: Old Iron King is not immune to poison. Lost Sinner is not immune to poison (but maybe resists it, think it took more shots here?) Prowling Magus dies from the raw damage before the status can even matter (!!!) and yet this was almost a failed match because one of the cleric dudes cast a defense buff or something. Freja probably is immune to poison, I landed plenty of hits and it never took (videogame logic, spiders are often poisonous in games, therefore they cannot be poisoned?) Dragonriders are not immune to poison. Looking Glass Knight is not immune to poison.

This game suddenly got a whole lot simpler.

And I got a weapon upgrade! Only took more than halfway through the game! Hunter's Blackbow gets me an extra...36 or so attack power? I'll take it. +10 and 50 DEX and Ring of Blades +1 = 290-something attack power? That approaches competence. Elemental arrows are also a lot better than expected (I ignored them a lot because they were pointless in DS1), I should really be using them for primary offense, but expenses. I'm actually running with the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring just to offset basically spending souls on every press of the attack button. It does actually work for bosses!

EDIT: Fudo tell us about this awful thing that didn't actually happen. Also I dunno about Shrine of Winter, I thought I'd grabbed Freja's soul and eaten it, but I definitely made sure to do that today and still got through the door with less than a million souls. So maybe I did forget last time.

[Fenrir]

Yeah poison is pretty cool when you have NO OFFENSE. Infusing like your great club with it is as cool as it is pointless though.

I've farmed all of No Man's Wharf until basically Total Mob Extinction with some Item Find + item on, and got no Sea Bow for it. Even though usually I just run through it once and always get one.

[Sierra]

I think the main thing is that arrows deliver like twice as much poison effect as melee weapons can. You can toss a melee weapon's attack rating in the toilet infusing it to get some mediocre chance of poison, or you can just switch in arrows and keep doing average damage while poisoning everything twice as fast. What the hell, guys?

(This is part of why the Manslayer stands out so much. It's a melee weapon where you don't get gimped on offense to deal status! There aren't many of those in DS2.)

I failed to get a sea bow, or a long bow, or even a bell keeper bow to drop from anything this time. But that's fine, I'm not sure I would've used them anyway. Too multi-attribute dependent when I knew the only thing I'd care about in the long run was DEX anyway. I can manage 200-250 a shot by this point, depending on enemy and arrow type. That's not outstanding, but it's not terrible either.

[Grefter]

So because you guys make me obsessive about Dark Souls without playing it just because I want to understand Fenrir and El Cid posts (not dissing you Fudo, but you ain't that special kind of cray).

I look up what Covetous Silver Serpent Ring does and see mention of Tesldora's set which boosts soul gains.  This is a set I think you should wear 24x7 since you seem to favour no armour anyway Cid.  Ghetto Bow Pope is a 10/10 look.