You have access to a lot of areas now. Capra demon is what you are suppose to kill next. Keep going until you reach the second bell. Your going to go a long way from firelink so you will need to by the repairbox from the undead merchant. For Capra demon you are suppose to use the stairs to relieve the pressure after killing the dogs (just retry until you get lucky).
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Dark Souls Review
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You might not know how to get to him. Take a right right after entering undead berg from Firelink, kick shields, and roll over boxes.
 (May 21st, 2019, 18:42)RFS-81 Wrote: I've been playing a bit sporadically after getting stuck for a while. Now I figured out that the reason why I couldn't first-person aim was that I had equipped a crossbow instead of a bow. With that problem out of the way I could finally "Try Tail" on the drake and now I have the Drake Sword and I'm loving it. I've been unlocking a bunch of new areas and shortcuts which I enjoyed a lot, and now I'm at the Capra Demon. Seems pretty standard fare after you get rid of the dogs. Roll around, hit him, don't get greedy and try to get in multiple hits at once. Still managed to fail of course. And getting rid of the dogs is a problem on its own, even though they're one-hit kills with the Drake Sword. I have a hard time actually killing them while the demon is swinging his swords around. Couple things. 1) MJW is right, Capra Demon is what you "should" kill next. If it makes you feel any better, I died more to that boss than any other boss in the game. That boss room is a travesty. 2) Definitely save New Londo for later. Catacombs are debatable, I guess. They're absolutely doable at the level you're at, and there are some upsides to doing so, but the "normal" route would be to also do them later. There are ways later to mitigate some of the more frustrating aspects of that area. I would focus on ringing the second bell, first. 3) Here's a couple suggestions for Capra Demon, but I'll spoiler it in case you don't want the help:
Thanks for the hints! I already found the merchant and got the repair box. I've already received the warning once that my weapon was going to break, so that seemed like a good idea.
I've seen the hint on wikia to increase poise in order to avoid getting knocked back by the dogs, but unfortunately the merchant didn't have any armor with high poise. I'll check if I have the ring, but I don't think I've collected many rings. Also, not really playing right now because I'm visiting my parents for a week. There's an old gaming PC here, but with the tiny screen it's no fun. 
I was doomed the moment i said the words: One thing to note: Lightning spears are nerfed so hard they feel useless. Not enough spell charges, and not enough damage per charge to make them worthwhile. I imagine they'd make for interesting variant play, very focused on spell charge restoring herbs.
Anywhere else I'd say that, it'd pass off as complaining, legit or not. Here? The moment I wrote the words, I already laid out the solution. And with the solution in sight, how could I back away from a variant challenge, after having robbed myself of the opportunity with my hexer-sorceress? The only question remaining was how I'd get there. Now to lay out the land: Dark souls is a melee game. As much as Diablo 1 had it's sorcerer sweat in the early game with limited gold to buy mana potions with, and no regeneration of any kind, Dark Souls 2 has a sorcerer limited to a set number of charges every spell equipped. Spell charges are restored when resting at a bonfire (A carryover from early wizardry games, especially the fourth's pentagrams), however enemies also respawn, so you have to expend spell charges to kill them again. There is a catch however: In Dark Souls 2 only, the enemies only respawn a limited number of times per "difficulty level". In ideal circumstances this prevents players from farming endlessly, forcing them to seek additional challenges by moving on or upgrading the area, or by joining the covenant of champions in the Scholar of the First Sin version. However, in this case, a caster with limited casts per day can exhaust the enemy hordes' reserves to pass unchallenged to the bosses. That is the true problem. Not only do cleric spells need more time to cast than sorcerers, but on top of that, I might find myself without enough damage loaded up to take out a boss. That is where spell recharging items come into play. Wilted Dusk Herbs are easily farmable from Desert Sorceresses in the Harvest Valley map from the second bonfire (also netting dragon charms against poison) and each use restores 70% of my spell charges per spell equipped. But to get there I had to first get started. Part 1: The Spark.
My variant is a caster cleric, shields, miracle casting items, and cleric spells allowed. For the starting class, given the choice between a Deprived and a Cleric, the Deprived was the superior choice needing less soul levels to get started. Giving her a name was more troubling, but after one look at the Rogue Revival team, Cyrene (lightning/chain lightning blue rogue) was a natural fit. I tried for the look of the sorceress, but without a fitting hairstyle, and given how hard it is to create a decent looking character, I went for a different look in the end. I grabbed the bonfire ascetic. Passing the Things Betwixt without stopping for fight, I picked up the Cleric's Sacred Chime from the ledge before entering Town. Too bad I had no spells to cast. I also picked up the crimson parma. It was a small shield, but at least I could equip it. For my first spell, I needed to pass the Lighthouse area (Heide's Tower of Flame), accessible directly from Town, and kill the Dragonrider boss. That unlocks the area with Licia, the first priest spell trader. Now, mind me, I had no way of dealing damage other than punching with my starting chime which is still dealing reduced damage from me not meeting it's faith requirements. The area is full of high level enemies, half of them still asleep at this point. So I ran past all of them, dodging and sprinting to escape blows, ignoring levers that add concentric rings to the dragonrider fight. The dragonrider has a neat little trick where he can be baited to fall into the water, which I abused mercilessly. It needs precise timing, and I messed up a few times which resulted in deaths, but eventually... Splash 12000 souls later, I rushed up, lit the bonfire, bought a bunch of faith and the minimum of 10 attunement for the first spell slot, and bought Lightning Spear with 6000 souls. Yes, my first spell has three charges. It deals twice the damage of Soul Arrow, but soul arrow has thirty charges and casts faster. THIS is how crippled faith casters are in this game. And I still didn't have enough faith to start casting it. So what could I do? I ate the dragonrider boss soul. Then I went to Forest of the Fallen Giants, and started making my way towards the Cardinal Tower bonfire. Sadly this meant clearing out the first few zombies over and over again with just the chime punch. The punch scales with faith and deals lightning damage, but it didn't have enough durability to make it. So as I was gaining enough souls I warped back to Town to buy more levels from the Emerald Herald (Much like how you sail to Ambrosia in Ultima 3 to buy stats at the various shrines). I cleared house in Things Betwixt for the extra souls and the amber herbs. I also cleared the rotunda of drops. It broke the monotony and offered a few extra souls from drops. At least my chime was dealing it's full damage. Eventually I could cast Lightning Spears, and they were... underwhelming. Sometimes I needed 2 shots per zombie because it survived with a sliver of health. Painful. At some point they started stopping respawning down at the river near the Crestfallen Retreat bonfire, and I could sneak past the rotunda area with only one zombie woken up. This left me with just enough juice to squeeze past the two ambushes. The lightning spears I expended on the greatsword ambusher, and then after an amber herb the archer and the grenadier greatsword zombie at the end of the tunnel. I killed the ambushing axe zombie too, but up on the ladder I was in a pickle, out of spell charges, Another greatsword zombie waited for me, and so close to the bonfire it would block me from resting! So I ate my last herb and two shots got the last obstacle down. The cardinal tower bonfire was mine, but that push was exceedingly risky. Fortune did favor the bold. So what was it good for? Lenigrast's key from the merchant of course. With it i could upgrade my chime to Level 3 at the smith. For the moment there was nothing else to gain in the Forest, so back it was to the Dragonrider bonfire. Past the lighthouse, into the depths of the tower, picking things up, I arrived at No Man's Wharf. I was going to sit there and start clearing out house, taking care of the dog, the resting zombie, and the one hanging from the closest pier. Kill them with spears, back to bonfire, repeat. After a bunch of levels bought, they stopped coming back. I also dinged 30 faith, and SUDDENLY Licia was giving me a copy of her set, complete with a hood that gives +1 charge to EVERY spell equipped. That was one third of my lightning spears! Four instead of three! Once it was done, I could take care of the annoying archer shooting me from the docks, and I saw a summon sign. The summon being a shade, that is an ally on a timer that decreases with each killed enemy. Having him around sped up my farming, and I copiously abused his presence to preserve my spell charges. Pushing forward and forward for another hour, I reached the top of the stairs, and from then on it was only a short jaunt with a burning torch that led me to my most coveted goal: Emit Force. I increased my attunement beforehand to give me 2 slots, as it was a damaging spell with 4 charges base, +1 from the hood, and just like that I passed a treshold. I could start killing the old knight guarding the entrance to the Dragonrider arena. A bunch of kills later (It took about twenty minutes), Cyrene could walk out of the arena without being harassed, and that meant she could summon a phantom for the Lighthouse, a somewhat frail knight with a Zweihander. He was a great distraction and allowed me to farm up my souls without much trouble. The lighthouse is great for souls if one is playing a caster, and Cyrene was no exception, after the odd early detours. We exhausted the place for a bunch of faith and some attunement, and then I had to think what to do next. Devotee Scarlet's shade sign wasn't showing up for some reason, and I didn't trust just the phantom and my Level 3 chime's spells with the boss. So what to do? Off to the Huntsman's Copse. After paying the tribute and grabbing the first bonfire, I punched/cast my way to the second bonfire, nothing too fancy this time, I saved up the spells for the butterflies in the cave, and rogues and the archer in the small building. They are too risky to melee. From here on it was exhausting the rogue who jumps down from above the bonfire entrance to ambush me, taking the jump down to the pillar in front of the bonfire for the Token of Fidelity (critical for later), and then down to the cave with the butterflies that I passed through on it's upper path on the way to the second bonfire, then taking out the big gecko (Basilisk) in the pit. Thanks to my spells I could shoot it without fear of retaliation. The kill netted me three large titanite shards, that means upgrading my chime to level 5. Good stuff. Part 2: The Gatekeepers
From here on I had two options. For one, try pushing on towards Harvest Valley, but the path is blocked by the Skeleton Lords boss, who ate my Creighton phantom on my run with a hexer. There was no way I can match both the DPS and spell volume that she outputted, so I needed something else. Then there is getting more spells from Targray, who needs the Token of Fidelity I just picked up to start speaking with me. However he is guarded by the Dragon and the Old Dragonslayer boss. Even though I had the Lighthouse cleared up until the Dragon, the shade didn't show up I also had the third option of farming Alluring Skulls in the skeleton cave in Huntsman's Copse to distract the rat minions in the area under Town known as the Grave of Saints, kill the Royal Rat Vanguard boss, and drop down for the Disc Chime, which is a serviceable punching weapon. The third option seemed like the most valid on the long run, so I settled on the arduous but safe path of forging a way through the Huntsman's Copse to the Undead Lockaway bonfire (the third one in the area). Luckily there is a shade called Bashful Ray in the area I could recruit, and we exhausted everything up to that point, ganged up on the Forlorn NPC invader, and finished off the other NPC guarding the key needed for that bonfire. Then we killed the necromancers, so the skeleton farming could begin (after some four-five hours). Exhausting the skeletons netted a total of 3 skulls, a little more farming in the covenant of champions another 2, and this was taking way too long given how short these last. I leveled my attunement up first to 25, which gave my fifth spell slot and little else, and then 27, which gave an additional casting of Lightning Spear and Emit Force, boosting my total offensive spells per day from 9 to 11. By this point I had the entire path cleared to the Skeleton Lords however, and with 2 healing spells equipped (Med Heal I bought, and Great Heal I found underneath the Grave of Saints area, since it's partially skippable, except for that chime I want) I was fairly certain I could keep the phantoms around long enough to have a shot at this. The skeleton lords themselves are not a problem. It's three of them and they have spells and whatnot, but they die quick and are slow. The real problem, are the minions they spawn on death. Two wheel skeletons for the first one, a small group of armor skeletons for second one, and a large group of rapier-wielding regular ones for the third. And here we are, on the move. Ray has a number of fire spells that can hit groups, and is a fast attacker with lots of damage. Furthermore he divided enemy attention, so neither Creighton, nor him could be mobbed to death. Skeletorr, Subpoena, and Felgarr's examples of frontage come to mind. I distracted a few too, letting them deal the damage they were here for. After some hit and run action, they suddenly were dead. And just like that, Cyrene broke her way out from the early game hell to the real world. From now on I stood a real chance and I could start dealing with bosses instead of just farming souls. Next up was getting the second bonfire in Harvest Valley. First off I grabbed the trader Chloanne for the Soul Appease spell that is very strong against all sorts of undead (Think of a Holy Bolt version of Nova), then bought Caressing Prayer from Licia to cure all the poisons I was going to accumulate. All that really stood in my way were crawling torsos and a singularity tossing giant reminiscent of the Crush Beasts from Act V in Diablo 2, but with a zombie on it's back instead of an imp. And yes, there were also the Desert Sorceresses guarding a lever I needed to pull, but I had enough spell charges for them and their minions were easy to punch/blast with Soul Appease. A little Wilted Dusk Herb farming followed. Then, armed with lots of herbs, Cyrene paid a visit to the Old Dragonslayer. (The Dragon I killed some time earlier, it was surprisingly easy for such an intimidating monster.) Turns out, with the Phantom and a strong chime, this caster was more than a match for him. Targray gave me another copy of Emit Force, and another AoE spell called Heavenly Thunder, which is like a cold sorceress' Blizzard spell, but more random and much slower to cast. Next up were a mixture of going through the Gutter into the Black Gulch, (Royal Rat Vanguard died so fast I almost forgot to blink. Soul Appease is brutal.) killing the pursuer, and getting +10 lightning disc chime and +10 lightning priest chime. For the latter, I needed to pass through the Ruin Sentinels as well, but they weren't a problem as long as I managed to output the necessary DPS. Part 3: Barrier Tower
Similarly, the Covetous Demon stood little chance against my divine onslaught. However, the Forlorn, a friendly neighborhood invader who got pretty much shredded by Bashful Ray's shade, came to me in harvest valley without giving me phantoms I could otherwise use. This was bad news as he could easily roll past my slow spells, but thankfully his AI was limited. I abused it mercilessly by running loops in the desert sorceress area, shooting only when I was sure he's locked into "catchup mode" where he forgets to roll. These NPC invaders have tons of health and deal similarly massive damage, while you, even if optimized, are forced to either do cheap tricks, like backstabs or ripostes, or to whittle them down in a battle of attrition. Guess which option I had. This served as a tough reminder, that while I had the juice needed to deal with the regular undead, the phantoms the game had in store for me were another league. I needed more spells, and more casts per slot to deal with them reliably. And since Iron Keep was doubly off-limits for me, (Three invasion phantoms guarded the entrance, and another one guards Earthen Keep) I set my sights on Brightstone Cove Tseldora. Passing the Shaded Woods was somewhat easy: Cyrene had the old ironclad armor to nullify backstabs, and with the binoculars, I could actually shoot the ghosts past the Shaded Ruins bonfire. Naturally, I rushed past the fog area, not bothering to get the fast cast ring +1, and then I extincted the ghosts between the shaded ruins and the boss. After one push to dial up Tark, I was good to go, and thanks to his scorpion power and stagger potential, Scorpioness Najka croaked without much chance. Between the Shaded Ruins bonfire and Najka I had to do a quick run to Shulva, the Sanctum City, for the repair tree, as Cyrene broke her clothes by being neglectful. That place sure taught me a bunch about the power of smashing things with my disc chime, HA! Around that point I realized Cyrene could probably make a push to kill Mythra, the Baneful Queen in Earthen Peak, and get the hidden lightning spear copy in the area. True to form, after passing the Doors of Pharros, I tested the waters. Forlorn didn't invade, I made it to Pilgrim Bellclaire's summon sign, and then I signed her up for a jolly romp through the area. While I didn't get the spell on the first run, a second try helped me clear out the remaining treasures. At this point I was running 50 faith with over 60 attunement, way more of the latter than what the "softcap" is (the point where returns start diminishing). The attunement was needed because Lightning Spear scales extremely well with Attunement. Starting at 3, the casts per slot can go as high as 15, half of the maximum for soul spears! Additionally, attunement gave cast speed and agility, the latter important for rolling godmode frames. Returning to brightstone, I found that all my sandbagging put me around 850 000 soul memory, which meant 150 000 more would unlock me Drangleic Castle, letting me ignore the Old Iron King for now (I need his crown later). So without much fanfare, Cyrene went down there. Grabbing bonfire, eating a herb or two on the way to the Giant Spider, and spamming it to death with lightning magic. It didn't even attack me once! The congregation and magus were still little more than roadbumps on the way. With that done, the way to Drangleic was opened to me. This meant that whatever limitation Cyrene had in terms of spellcasts was about to disappear. The reason for that is Licia selling unlimited copies of Lightning Spear, and Cyrene having lots of unused spell slots. It was a match literally made in heaven, and after dispatching the remaining ghosts blocking my path, I pushed my way to the Drangleic Castle and the King's Gate bonfire. And just like that, I was in. Gone was the need to chime punch and conserve, gone was the need to farm and stock up on flowers, I was officially the cheesemaster, the reason lightning spears were nerfed so harshly in the first place. Mind me, it cost me an arm and leg, and this character would fall apart like a house of cards should even a much weaker battlenet reject come in and as much as sneeze in my general direction, but hey, Cyrene crested the Atmos hill and unlocked the ultimate in priest power! Part 4: Looking Glass Cannon.
Unfortunately, in the room right after the bonfire, Cyrene woke up ALL ruin sentinels, and it took her a while to despawn them. Sadly she couldn't despawn the stone soldiers, so they ate up a few shots, but nothing I couldn't handle. Bashful Ray (the reason I ended up unnecessarily opening every ruin sentinel door) accompanied me and gave me enough interference to make the two NPC invaders' lives difficult, and with his contribution I readily made it to both the next bonfire, and the two Dragonriders. No holes this time, but with the power of Zeus and Pilgrim Bellclaire's phantom at my side, I needed tricks no longer. In the meantime, I gathered up the Lion Mage set, and killed the skeleton lords again on New game+ (Bonfire Level 2) for the much better fast cast ring. It was enough to beat Fencer Sharron, but Armorer Dennis was still a little too tough to crack. The final ingredient for his demise would be the ring guarded by the next boss, the Looking Glass knight. Getting to him was nothing special at this point. Cyrene used Luet on the demoted horse from Executioner's Chariot (I should kill it sometime), and then dealt with the mimic from afar. Gargoyle was also easy to activate from afar, and it turns out it couldn't go into small spaces. Another win for tactical ingenuity and ranged combat! All in all, the rest of Drangleic Castle was thoroughly underwhelming. Past Drangleic laid the Shrine of Amana, but before I went there (beyond grabbing the entry bonfire), Cyrene had a score to settle with Dennis. This was the last time I'd deal with him, but he still remained an annoying thorn in my side, as well as a roadblock. I previously Alt-F4-ed him to get some of Magerold's stuff, but this time I was serious. He got me once, I got him back. Patience, not getting greedy, and having fast cast saved the day. So did the arch of the bridge allowing me to make good use of the binos. Forlorn died the same way. I ran in circles, dodging his haphazard attacks, and shot him while he was in catchup mode. This gave me a "free pass" to the Smelter Demon. Free pass because I didn't have to worry about NPC invaders, not entirely free because I had to deal with the samurai-like knights that could chop me up for sushi in a single combo. Ouch. Still, after a few tries, and before despawning would be achieved, I made it to the boss with Lucatiel in tow. Cyrene was about a hundred soul levels, and four equipment levels over him. He didn't stand a chance. That led me back to the Shrine. Cyrene made it across to the second bonfire (the first being at the entrance) with little trouble, but the shooters and ambushing lizardmen were making my life difficult. Worst of it was the amount of durability I lost casting lightning spears to take them out. So what choice did I have? I sandbagged them relentlessly. Once they stopped coming back, the NPC summon was finally in sight and trying to push through the OTHER half of the section towards the bonfire could begin. That's where all the archdragon knights were chilling out, and they could very easily sidestep my lightning spears. Talk about annoyance! Worst of all was when they came in a pair. And they had fire support from a pair of enemy sorceresses shooting their annoying blue berries, so very careful luring was required to dispatch all of them. It took a while, but I got a lucky break well before they stopped respawning, and could claim the next bonfire! BUT that area was filled with bugs that needed exterminating because they had a cloud that would damage equipment. Past them was a rotunda with waist-high water filled with two archdrake knights, three sorcies, and a healer. The healer was probably the worst offender, as cyrene lacked the stamina to overwhelm her with brute force. The archdrakes preferred going into defensive mode this time (one of the problems you get when you put your monsters on a leash. Gone are the glorious times when Sirian could take a council member for a walk and lead him straight to the gates of Kurast Docks), so they couldn't be cracked either. Unless... Unless they ate two shots while going straight at you BEFORE hitting their leash's end. This was usually before the healer could get a spell off, and the sorcies could be taken out independently. That way Cyrene could go down and not deal diminished damage from being out of maximum range, and with their formation broken they were easy pickings. This really makes me appreciate the second game's design, especially this shrine area. It's a tremendous pain to deal with these advanced groups in melee, which is most likely the reason so many players, so used to melee supremacy, complained that the game likes throwing overwhelming numbers at them. They probably tried dealing with them head on instead of taking a step back to assess the situation, and then using the tools at their disposal (bombs, throwing knives, weapons with special abilities, pyromancies, spell charge restoring items, etc.) to crack them open. While I didn't technically need to despawn them to make it to the boss arena, I did, and the Demon of Song died without much fanfare. It was much easier than the rest of the area. Part 5: It's not yet downhill from there.
The next area had a weapon I was coveting, the Mace of the Insolent. It's not "technically" a chime, but the Disc Chime is technically a shield that can cast miracles, so I gave it a pass. It was more of a dark weapon than a lightning one anyways, so it would be a useful tool for taking easy backstab damage for certain edge cases. Anyways the trick of this area was to avoid lighting braziers, and to kill the torch-wielding zombie at the beginning of the area to prevent aggroing Agdayne and his broody band. Beyond that there were areas where zombies would spawn constantly and try ringing bells. If the bells were hit by either a zombie or by your attacks/spells, the crosses in the area would spawn strong caster ghosts (Gloam Lite). Likewise, if you hit the crosses with melee weapons, they would each spawn a defensive ghost. It didn't apply to spells, so Cyrene had a free pass in destroying all the dangers before passing through the area with ease (Nameless Usurper was no problem either). I destroyed the Crushed Eye Orb as soon as I found it. Licia was too important alive, and I didn't need her special spell. That brought Cyrene to Velstadt. Now from the videos I watched he was a real pain in the neck, with lots of mobility and the ability to eat the Agdayne summon for breakfast. Would that mean an annoying struggle to solo him? Not at all! Bellclaire's summon sign was right at the beginning, so leading her through a cleared crypt was no problem. She had a shield, and sat behind it while Cyrene blasted Velstadt to oblivion with high voltage divine power. I saw Ymfah do it on his pacifist run, probably healing a lot and then some to cross this treshold with two summons. Killing Velstadt gave me the King's Ring and opened a bunch of doors, the most important being Aldia's Keep. Now was really the time to enter and tie up loose ends in the Iron Keep, and aside a little annoying death to a samurai I didn't remember, it was routine clearing. Manhunter O'Hara was summoned for Old Iron King, and spell damage quickly got the fight over with. There was also the Pilgrims of the Dark covenant. Let it be said that when I finished off Darklurker I had to rest for two hours for the chest pains to subside. Stress somatization is no joke. I need to admit that I in fact caved and used godmode just to get past the chasm (I used the agape ring) once I racked up too many deaths from the boss and the local NPCs, and turned it off only for the boss fight. Turns out that simply the confidence that I wouldn't need to worry about getting back to the boss was enough to get it down with but a few close calls. That was on new year's day, after a messed up night with poor sleep and a nearly ruined new year's eve from attempts with the boss. Oh how glad I was to have it in my rearview mirror and also to play with my new Dragon Chime toy! Aldia's Keep was also puzzling, but operated more on the level of ambushes left and right, from mirrors, paintings, brick walls, you name it: They had some enemy behind. Luet was a quiet champion and faithful knight to Cyrene once again, helping her through all the hardships this place had to offer, aside from the invader at the start. Still there were four "summonable" Forlorns that needed dealing with to activate the dragon and gain the key for the right side of the keep, and Luet was indispensable at making this a lot less headache once again. The ogres between the hidden bonfire and the boss were despawned for safety raeasons in case I'd need to reclaim souls. The guardian dragon in the cage... died in a few shots. His buddies in Dragon Aerie were doing better, in no small part thanks to the point blank exploding zombies that supported them. Their tail smashes were no joke either, more than capable of one-shotting me! Cyrene cleared the land from back to front, using the rope added in Scholar of the First Sin to skip the area and claim the Dragon Shrine bonfire before tangling with the locals. The shrine itself was nothing special. With nothing of interest that I particularly wanted, I had Cyrene do the Indiana Jones thing on the challengers and leave once being given the Ashen Mist Heart at the end. The various Memories were nothing special either. Benhart gave me his gear because I got him through the Congregation boss fight in Brightstone a second time after expending an ascetic. The Giant Lord was just as simple to deal with as the Last Giant way way back when I started. This leaves me within arm's reach of the final boss, and it's also about time to do the three DLC areas. Cyrene already made some headway into both Sunken and Iron Kings, each containing a toy that would finish what I started with this build. Iron King's Crown for actual spell charge regeneration, and Lightning Clutch ring for the last drops of damage I can squeeze out of Lightning Spears. This run has been a blast of a year, and the only thing remaining was the finale. (February 1st, 2020, 17:23)Boro Wrote: I was doomed the moment i said the words: One thing to note: Lightning spears are nerfed so hard they feel useless. Not enough spell charges, and not enough damage per charge to make them worthwhile. I imagine they'd make for interesting variant play, very focused on spell charge restoring herbs. I have to admit that I didn't understand certain parts of this challenge since I've never played a Souls game, but it sounded interesting. Only on Realms Beyond would we complain about a skill being weak and then proceed to try to beat the game with it. What your variant reminded me of was my failed solo Angela challenge in Trials of Mana. You said Dark Souls is biased in favor of physical characters, and Trials of Mana is too. Trials of Mana bosses often have counterattacks specifically for magic, so sometimes even if you're a wizard you have to forgo spells and bash them with your stick. The MP cap is low relative to the cost of spells, MP restoration items are weak, and Angela's final boss has too much HP and no elemental weakness. Both Dark Souls and Trials of Mana have spell charging time too, if I'm reading your post correctly.
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
T-Hawk, on my Final Fantasy Legend 2 All Robot Challenge. Quote:Only on Realms Beyond would we complain about a skill being weak and then proceed to try to beat the game with it. Yes, the variant bug has thoroughly infested me. In fact this caster has long sidelined my "real" unrestricted hexer. Quote:What your variant reminded me of was my failed solo Angela challenge in Trials of Mana. You said Dark Souls is biased in favor of physical characters, and Trials of Mana is too. Trials of Mana bosses often have counterattacks specifically for magic, so sometimes even if you're a wizard you have to forgo spells and bash them with your stick. in essence, yes, but Dark Souls lets every type of stat be melee through infusions. I didn't talk much about stats, but there are four "damage stats" in each souls game and they correspond to a certain type of weapons or spells: Strength and Dexterity are fairly obvious, one for the heavy and another for the finesse based weapons (and a mixture of both for quality ones). Intelligence is for sorceries (Think of Arcane spellbook from D&D, gut the useful spells and replace the rest with various flavors of magic missile until its bland), and finally Faith (or Piety for the absolute wizardry nuts out there) for Miracles (Fancy name for the divine spellbook of D&D minus most of it's debuffs) Since the latter two don't have many weapons dedicated to them, aside from casting implements, you can use infusions to make weapons scale damage off your chosen magic stat. In the original dark souls 1, you also got pyromancies which don't scale damage from your stats, but from the number of humanities held up to 10, turning every fighter into a decent caster with even just a lucky streak. In 2 and 3, Pyromancies scale off both intelligence and faith. in 2 the lowest of the two are counted, and in 3 there are odd behind the scenes "stat floors" to deal with based on the upgrade level of your pyromancy flame. There are also dark sorceries and miracles in 3. In 2 they are lumped together as hexes, so I made them off-limit for this run. It works the same way as pyromancies in the second and third game. Quote:The MP cap is low relative to the cost of spells, MP restoration items are weak, and Angela's final boss has too much HP and no elemental weakness. Both Dark Souls and Trials of Mana have spell charging time too, if I'm reading your post correctly. What you said about Magic Points is exactly how dark souls 3 is. 1 and 2 however use a bastardized version of D&D's vancian magic system, where you get a number of spell slots, you can equip spells into your spell slots, and each equipped spell has a set number of times it can be used before resting at a bonfire. This means that if you want to equip multiple copies of a spell to increase the number of times you can cast it, you have to either manually track down additional copies in new game plus modes, buy them from vendors, or farm them from enemies. So for example, Great Lightning Spear: You got one copy from finding it, then you can buy another copy, and finally you get one more in Undead Crypt. Each has 2-10 uses depending on your attunement. Effectively each spell equipped has it's own MP. These uses (MP) can be recovered through consumables yes. In dark souls 3 you also have ashen estus flasks, which are taken from your regular estus flask stock (literally D1 belt), and restore your MP. As for charging/casting time, It is about two seconds for fastest cast lightning spear.
Wow, Trials of Mana even has a somewhat similar stat system to Dark Souls. Even Japanese developers can't get away from the Dungeons and Dragons and Wizardry influences, it seems. Here's how they work:
Strength/STR: Physical attack power, as you'd expect. Everyone needs this. Dexterity/DEX: A glitched stat that doesn't work, except for some of Hawkeye's the thief's spells. Stamina/STA: Bonus to max HP and physical defense. All characters need this. Intellect/INT: Increases the power of all spells that are NOT Light element, max MP, and magic defense. Spirit/SPRT: Governs Light attack power and defense, and healing spells and the Poto Oil item. Also MP. Luck/LUCK: Useless because critical hits don't work. At least you can avoid treasure chest traps after battle! Spirit was called Piety in the fan translation, back when Trials of Mana was still Seiken Densetsu 3. Of course, there are some differences. It seems you can focus on a build in Dark Souls, while Trials of Mana has low caps that force you to put level up points into more than just your best stat. Trials of Mana has a blander equipment system that mostly just increases your stats, rather than having any special properties. Angela would have given up attack magic for good if she had weapons that scaled to her INT! As for spells, debuffs are the most valuable. Ailments don't work on bosses, like in many RPGs. Buffs to stats can be replaced with consumable items from the Night Market. You can also buy items to change your melee attack to a particular element, except for Light and Dark, which come from spells or rare drops. Your playthrough makes me want to try out a Dark Souls game for myself someday, maybe if I can get one of them cheap. Are there mandatory enemies that are immune to particular spells or elements like pyromancy? I would think that specialty would run into difficulties in certain areas.
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
T-Hawk, on my Final Fantasy Legend 2 All Robot Challenge.
For 2, the only heavily lightning resistant enemy i ran into was the Looking Glass Knight, who was a boss out in the rain which increases fire resist but reduces lightning one! Some even said that it makes lightning the strongest element against him.
There are some heavily resistant enemies to other elements (Old Iron King for fire, and Pursuer for dark), but if you have the stats for pyromancy, you can also use hexes, and to a lesser extent sorceries to go around that. Dark Souls 3 changes it up, having it's very own Land of Endless Fire Resistance. There are also optional expansion enemies, like Midir, who is coincidentally resistant to both Fire and Dark, the mainstays of a pyromancer. In fact pyromancy only players found that the only way to consistently damage it was through the boulder heave pyromancy. However even that is changed up in the sense that if you build into a pyromancy stat split, evening out INT/PIE, then you can find chimes and staves for miracles/sorceries that scale best from this mixture. In essence making the pyro setup the ultimate in spellcasting. Pyromancy glove also scales it's spellpower extremely well with faith, meaning that a high faith build won't lose all that much pyromancy damage from neglecting intelligence, as long as a minimum of 18 intelligence for a glove upgraded to +6 or higher, or 20 intelligence for a glove at +3 to +5 is met. Another thing: After getting pretty far without buying stats for maximum health in Dark Souls 2, I resolved to keep it that way for flavor purposes, at least for the New Game difficulty. |
