This post will discuss my thoughts on the game and have some general tips at the end of it. If you don't know everything about the game you'll probably learn something. Any possible spoilers will be in my first 3 paragraphs and at the very end.
After 800 hours of Dark Souls, 20 characters up to level 60, 4 of those going up to 120ish, 3 of them going into NG+, the rest left at a specific level for one reason or another, I had forgotten what playing the game blind felt like. I can honestly say that Dark Souls 2 is a refreshing change of pace for me. I don't agree with a couple of the design choices that will hopefully and likely be patched anyway ex. no red/blue eye orbs - just cracked ones. But it's really nice. There's so much stuff to do, so many things to learn about.
I find myself getting lost in mini quests I give myself so I can progress, getting a Pyromancy Flame, getting one more Titanite Shard, my most recent mission is really embarassing; I'm stuck because I used a Soul Vessel so I can use a cool new weapon I made from the (spoiler) Skeleton Lords (spoiler) boss fight and go into a more hex oriented build. But I accidentally gave myself lower stats than I required. Too much Faith, not enough int, too much strength, not enough DEX. So now I'm on a mission to find a fifth Soul Vessel, which is a big challenge, because those are pretty scarce, and I've already used four of them
The number one issue I have with the game, but also my favorite thing about it right now is probably that there's no meta. What I mean by that is that there's no current level to stay at, no known sweet spot to keep your stats (in DS it was softcapped at about 40 because after 40 you'd have huge diminishing returns), no normal path to take for each boss, and nobody knows what levels to play at in each area. I'm level 80 and I might be in a place where there's only level 150 and up, or as low as 50s. In Dark Souls Sen's Fortress was level 40-60 most of the time, sometimes up to 80. That number isn't established in Das2.
Spoilers end here for a while. The following tips are just gameplay concepts I believe most people don't know.
here's a spoilers for you guys and gals
dual wielding is still pretty useless.
Dual wielding is good if you use power stance, you need 150% of the stats required to use a weapon to do it, and they have to be compatible. One dagger requires 2 STR and 6 DEX, 2 daggers in power stance requires 3 STR and 9 DEX. Hold Triangle/Y when dual wielding compatible weapons to enter power stance.
Well, I beat dark souls, I can't get passed the second boss in dark souls 2. Damn.
I think they shortened the roll invincibility window to make it harder.
Animation speed scales with the Adaptability stat (ADP) this includes rolling, popping Estus, lifegems, everything. Increases iframes too.
Even though I haven't done it I suggest leveling ADP and END a lot.
Every level that you upgrade the lower of these two stats (END and ADP) will give you more natural poise. So if you have 6 ADP and 8 END you can level ADP 3 times before you have to level END for more Natural Poise.
Do not burn Human Effigies unless you do not want to play online. Some people seem to think that's how you use them. You just use them, like a Humanity from DS, or Estus.
Don't use Bonfire Ascetic unless you're SURE you want that place to become 50 levels higher. They will kill you.
Don't join Covenant of Champions unless you are already good at the game. If you don't know where it is already you are not good enough at the game.
Rings that keep your souls/humanity on death do break, but you can repair them for 3000 or 6000 souls depending on which of the two rings you use.
STR is less important to level than DEX when you're trying to use a weapon, if you want to use a weapon that requires 20 STR and 10 DEX you just need 10 of each to 2 hand it. In Dark Souls you needed to have 66% of the strength to 2 hand a weapon, in Das2 you need 50% of the STR. People thought that was removed but it was not, infact it was buffed to 50%. Some weapons have extremely high STR requirement and are made with 2 handing in mind.
Deprived is arguably the best for a Hex based build or for a sorceries and miracles build, really nothing else except Soul Vessel flexibility (being able to switch well into any type of class), Explorer and Warrior are both good if you're new to the game, otherwise I advise staying away from them. For the caster classes Sorc is good if you don't want to use miracles, Cleric is good if you don't want to use sorceries. Knight is my favorite for a melee oriented build. I might be forgetting one.
There are three types of spell casting devices: Hand, Staff, Talisman. I know of 2 hands (Pyromancy Flame, Dark Pyromancy Flame), Two Catalysts (Sorcerer's Staff, and one that is good with Hexes found in Bastille I believe), and two Talisman (I forgot their names, will update later) These are the only ones I know of but I'm sure there are more of them out there.
After you kill an enemy 15 times they will not respawn. They will respawn if you're in the Covenant of the Fittest or you use a bonfire ascetic.
There are no more iframes when doing animations except rolling. Because of this backstabs are a lot riskier now, and ripostes are useless in multi enemy fights. Entering boss doors when surrounded is not recommended.
Once you parry the enemy will fall down, wait until they stop moving, move closer and use a light attack to riposte.
There's now a time to do a critical attack once you break someone's guard. if you attack enough while someone's shield is up that they run out of endurance you get a chance at a critical, called a guard break attack. They will move back and be wide open, similar to the riposte you must wait until they are completely open and then move forward and light attack.
All tips that might contain spoilers are below this.
In the Bastille, at the top of the tower right across the bridge from Sinner's Rise is a man named Straid, he is petrified and is blocking a bonfire, you need a Fragrant Branch of Yore to unpetrify him, he will take your boss souls and 1500 souls and upgrade them into boss items. I got a pretty cool bone scythe from trading the Skeleton Lords' souls to him.
If you got the Petrified Something gift you should LEAVE it at the crows in the tutorial zone, do NOT discard it like I did accidentally, you do not have to reload before you pick it up, just drop it and grab it again. Pray you got something good.
Also, if you start the game with the Petrified Something, dropping it into the nest will grant you 1 of 3 really good items.
Wish I had known this before I started the game ;-;
It's actually one of 5 or 6 items. White ring, titanite slab, petrified dragon bone, channeler's trident, and a couple others I can't remember.
The second bonfire in the giant's forest has a shortcut, right next to that fire bomb thrower on the ledge where the pursuer spawns there's a bunch of explosive barrels. If you get those to explode it opens a wall right into the bonfire room. My head exploded when I found that out.
The pursuer will show up later in the game if you don't kill him early. he will appear in some boss rooms and sometimes will just get eagle dropped down ontop of you, this gives me reason to believe his boss fight scales with your level.
In Majula there's a well with a rock on the edge of it, hit that rock, a body will come up with an Estus Flask Shard, give that to the Emerald Herald. Now you have 2 Estus Flasks at the beginning of the game.
If you talk to the Crestfallen Knight by the large obelisk in Majula that shows total player deaths and you exhaust his dialogue he will ask you to join Way of the Blue, The pusillanimous individual covenant. This covenant will summon someone in the Blue Sentinals to come help you whenever you get invaded by a red phantom.
Keep talking to the Crestfallen Knight and when more NPCs have populated Majula he will seem happier, he will give you items aswell. Soul Vessel, a Ring of Steel Protection, ect.
Do not jump down the hole in Majula, wait until you get the guy to set up a ladder, if you can't wait do it with 100% life, low armor, roll when you hit the ground, use the ring.
Buy things from the armor merchant in Majula, spend some souls there often and he will offer more armor, including boss armors after a while. If you don't buy from him I suspect he goes hollow. I hadn't bought anything ever from him (nothing looked good) and he started asking himself why he is still here and started stuttering a lot. I purchased everything he had and the next time I came into town he had more armor and seemed rather happy.
There's a lever to draw the ghost ship in when you get to No Man's Wharf, took me literally 3 hours of crying because my game was glitched before I summoned someone and he just took me to the lever.
When you're going through the long path down in Majula, past the "contraption does not move" (use a miracle on it) and you get to the bottom at a sewer looking place there's a pull chain you can grab on the left of the gates. Took me a while to find that.
Spoilers end here.
Wonderful game, From has made the only trilogy of good games this generation. Can't wait to see what Dark Souls 2 becomes.
EDIT: I think I'm autistic lmao
EDIT 2: Just used all of those and made this for /dsg/ on /vg/
http://pastebin.com/VLSeAgitRefer to this from now on, it's got some more, less organized stuff. Mostly spoiler content has been added since this post though.
