Took the plunge, bought Dark Souls...

After one hundred and fofty plus hours in the world of Gransys, courtesy of Dragon's Dogma, I finally buckled and ordered Dark Souls. For some reason the 360 version (even the limited edition) was around a fiver cheaper than the PS3 game, so once again I'm playing on Xbox, ready to start a game that almost universally seems to be considered punishingly hard.

Anyone got any tips for someone who never played Demon Souls and has almost literally no idea what to expect?

Went for Pyromancer to start, liked the idea of tossing flames at everything. Took a while to get the item that let's you use your magic attacks, but typically you seem to be limited to how many times you can use the attack, making it less viable than I'd have thought.

Oh, and I died. Lots.

Into the room with the Taurus Demon, the same room you run away from it in earlier, and it killed me in one shot. Fought my way back there, and it did it again. And again. And again. Lost around 600 souls as well. Hmm. Guess I need to think up a strategy that doesn't rely on my non-ability to predict his hugely powerful attacks, and try and hit him with some ranged attacks.

be careful around stairs. i learned that from my friend

Do you mean the Taurus Demon on the bridge in Undead Burg or the Asylum Demon in the area where you start?

The Asylum Demon is pretty much there to force you to dodge and read attacks, there's not much else that can be said aside from: hit him in the ass and run away if he flies up. If you happen to have any firebombs they can make the fight pretty easy.

The Taurus Demon can be killed very easily by (spoiled in case you want to figure it out)

Spoiler:

Also don't worry about losing souls, especially not this early in the game. 600 is absolutely nothing, as you'll come to see.

PS: Pyromancy is a great choice for magic because, unlike sorcery and miracles, it requires no stat investment whatsoever to make your spells more powerful. To upgrade them you need to rescue Laurentius from the depths who will upgrade your Pyromancy Flame in exchange for souls.

Yeah, my bad, it's the Asylum Demon. Where did I get the name Taurus Demon from? Anyway, yeah, the big thing that you run away from initially only to be forced back in with a short while later. Finally beat it though - one plunging attack, then three or four Pyromancy spells and it went down. That felt good.

Glad to hear I seem to have chosen well with Pyromancy. I had considered going knight, but though better of it.

Also, I need a little help getting a coupel of the moves down; the games says that left stick + right bumper = kick and that left stick + right trigger = jump attack, but I've tried every variation I can think of and cannot pull those moves off. Am I missing something obvious?

From memory the timing is a little bit fiddly but you just have to press the analog stick forwards and hit the respective button at the same time. It still gave me problems every so often up to the end of the game so don't feel bad about not pulling it off at first. For what it's worth neither move is particularly useful outside of PvP imo, kicking is good to help break the guard of enemies with shields but I prefer to just run around them and go for a backstab.

The Undead Burg is getting annoying. Not because the enemies are tougher, that's a given, and if you're patient they're not too much trouble, but because the level design and physics engine seem to conspire against you.

Case in point; see the glowing letters on the ground, "trap ahead", and I can see a barrel at the top of the stairs. Obviously, that's going to come crashing towards me. Yep, there it-- what? The barrel hit me, yes, I wasn't fast enough to avoid it, but despite the fact that I was next to a wall and not near the ledge, the ragdoll physics bounced me between the wall and the barrel until I flopped over the ledge to my death. Now I'm hoping it was just the physics engine having "a moment", rather being the norm but it doesn't half take the game from "challenging" to "downright unfair" if not.

Beat the Taurus boss on the third try - theplunging attack being a little hit and miss in terms of whether or not it would come out (a couple of times I just fell to the floor as though the button input simply hadn't registered) - so i ended up plunging once then simply dodging his attacks and hitting him with the Pyromancer's fire attack. Took five or six hits, but he went down.

I'm now sat on a bridge, looking at a... drake? Fuck me, if that's a drake, I'd hate to see what this game thinks a full grown dragon looks like.

I agree with you simi this game is cheap at times. Although its basically a mainstream S and M game.

The barrel incident aside, I've not seen anything that I'd qualify as cheap, per se. Granted, I'm still early in the game, in the Undead Burg, but most enemies have identifiable patterns they follow. Only problem is against boss enemies you've usually died two or three times before you understand and can exploit those patterns, which can get frustrating as you'll have to wade through half a dozen fodder enemies to get their again.

Trial and error is very much part of the game though. I'm still stuck on the part with the Drake guarding the bridge, and there's a bonfire underneath that allows you to save (and lets you farm souls from the enemies on the bridge that the drake burns) but no other path I can see. I've tried running along the bridge, but I'm killed before I get where I need to go and I'm now wandering in circles trying to find a path.

I also stumbled upon two enemies who absolutely stomped me; a tall knight, looking rather like Sauron from LotR, and a huge guy with a club, living the the basement of the tower you finght the Taurus Demon. Oh, and I had someone else "invade" my world. I wasn't even aware this had PvP, and when he first appeared, he bowed to me. A nice straightforward duel, thought I. No, no, you poor gullible sap. I bowed back, and while I was stuck in the animation, he moved behind me and killed me instantly.

Actually, scratch what I said at the top. That was cheap as fuck.

Oh yeah thats a bit glitchy. From what i remember, you have to basically run full pelt at the drake and hide inside the wall nook. As sometimes he just won't move, you literally a have a few seconds. IIRC if you look where the bonfire is there is a grating you will be able to get through to the other side quite easily if you go down the stairs midway along the bridge. but just remember to pull the lever on the other side.

Ha, would you look at that. Completely missed an alcove on the lower level. Right, what's going to kill me next?

If you're feeling ballsy it might be a good idea to go back to the bottom of that tower and kill the guy with the huge club. He drops a ring, one of the best in the game according to most people, that raises your equipment burden by 50%. Staying mobile is so important in this game and being able to roll normally while still wearing decent armor is great.

If you decide to give it a shot, unequip all your armor (seriously, he'll one shot you anyway and you want to be able to move as fast as possible) and dodge/run around him when he attacks so you can get a backstab in. Then rinse and repeat.

I tried already, though granted I was laden down with my armour, and I could barely scratch him. Dodge his attacks, sure. I hit him... around 13 or 14 points of damage and his health doesn't seem to move. Repeat three or four times and I got careless, tried a two hit combo and he crushed me.

On the plus side, I went back and fought the dark knight guy. That was a tough fight, but he went down to my fire spells after swordsmanship proved ineffective. Dropped his sword too. "Excellent," thought I. But no, another cruel trick. It's literally twice as strong as anything else in my inventory, but apparently I'm not at a high enough level yet to wield it. Thanks a bunch, Dark Souls. I'd assume that I'm not yet meant to be fighting him, but I've basically got no reward for busting my ass which feels a little... spiteful.

With Havel (club guy) with gear from the beginning of the game you HAVE to backstab him otherwise, yeah, you'll only do 10-20 damage per hit.

Weapons have stat requirements, you can see them on the weapon description. When you don't meet the strength requirements for something it's possible that you might be able to wield it with two hands as you get a 50% boost to strength when you do so. If you don't meet a dex requirement you're shit out of luck though, you won't do any damage.

You would have gotten either http://darksouls.wikidot.com/black-knight-greatsword or http://darksouls.wikidot.com/black-knight-sword depending on the guy you killed, the former needs 22 strength to 2hand and the latter needs 14.

Not sure which weapon I got from him, but my strength is 15 at the moment, so I could two-hand the lesser version of the sword, though I'm not sure I'd be comfortable sacrificing my shield. A glass cannon is seldom a good idea, and Dark Souls is probably the most inappropriate game imaginable for such a build.

With regards to the club guy, I'll have another shot at him later, trying the backstab option.

Inigo Montoya wrote:

If you decide to give it a shot, unequip all your armor (seriously, he'll one shot you anyway and you want to be able to move as fast as possible) and dodge/run around him when he attacks so you can get a backstab in. Then rinse and repeat.

Hah, can't believe that worked. The kicker is that you need to roll towards him, not left or right, otherwise he'll track you and squash you anyway. Still, got the ring, and carrying load has jumped from 57 to 87. Nice.

Okay, not sure what's going on, but I've steamrollered through the Cathedral/Undead Parish. I mean steamrollered as well. Everything, without exception, has fallen in one hit, even the two huge guys in the Cathedral itself. I raised my stats enough to equip the Black Knight Sword, and it's just awesome, especially now the Blacksmith has upgraded it a couple of times.

Haven't died here yet and things are rosy. I'm just waiting to get skullfucked by some obscenely huge boss now and to put my current self confidence in its place.

EDIT: No, I lied. The Black Night on the way in from the Undead Burg did kill me once.

You're probably a little overleveled for where you are, pretty much everyone is around that point on their first run through the game because they die more and end up with more overall souls as a result. It's nothing to worry about though, aside from health, burden and stamina stats don't mean a whole lot until you start using fully upgraded scaling weapons, if you ever do that.

The upgrades would make a bigger difference, one thing I really like about this game is that weapon choice is mostly down to which movesets you prefer because, outside of very specialised builds, it's usually reinforcement and ascension that makes weapons strong, not them being particularly difficult to get in the first place or other stuff you'd typically see in RPGs.

Yeah, i guessed I was quite a way overlevelled when the big guy in the Cathedral went down in one shot, despite looking like he meant business. I'm currently level 39 and have just beaten the Gargoyles on the roof. Annoying fire breath aside, they were easy though the second one almost caught me out - having murdered the first one I let my guard down and got smashed from behind. Quick estas flask later and Gargoyle #2 fell in five shots, which is four more than anything else at the moment.

Not sure where to head next, going to explore the Darkmoon garden because A) it's nearby and B) why the hell not?

wtf, sim i was like level 12 at that point. Those gargoyles were a bitch i killed them and thought f the game, after something stupid happened. I killed a few other bosses. That cathedral guy took me loads of backstabs.

Level 12? Jesus, no wonder you thought it was tough. I'd hit 12 by the time I entered the Undead Burg just by spening half an hour farming the five or six skeletons near the bonfire leading into the aquaduct.

Some of the big stone guys in the garden are causing problems - they die easy enough, though they do take three hits rather than one,boo! - but because they cast magic which seems to overencumber you, resulting in inability to dodge, meaning you've got to block their attacks which uses all your stamina in one shot. When the second shot comes, you're dead.

Mainly I'm dying because I'm careless. Be interesting to see how tough the next boss is because the gargoyles were a pushover. Level 12 though? Fuck that.

The next boss you'll fight is actually the easiest in the game, it's this big butterfly and all it does is fly along a bridge shooting magic at you. For some reason the game gives you the chance to summon a NPC helper right before you fight it too, god knows why.

You really are extremely overleveled for this point though, the general range for gargoyles is 10-20.

No wonder the undead parish was such a breeze... not even sure how I've gotten twenty levels past the norm, but it's a pleasant advantage to have in a game that gives so few.