Took the plunge, bought Dark Souls...

You need your Zwei at +10 to make it lightning, check the upgrade chart here: http://darksouls.wikidot.com/upgrade

Aww, crap.

My Zwei is already at +15, so I'd have to undo all those demonite chunks and that Slab I threw on it to get lightning damage? Boo. For what it's worth, I'm unsure if elemental upgrade is worthwhile as my STR is currently at 40 and I'm aware that elemental weapons don't scale with your stats. Is the lightning damage likely to make up the difference even without stat scaling?

A +15 Zwei is 325 physical damage with C strength and D dex scaling, 40 isn't that much for a scaling weapon build and C and D are pretty shitty anyway.

Also a +5 Lightning Zwei is 357 physical damage + 364 lightning damage.

Nuts, it really is going to be best to downgrade to +10 then try the lightning route then, isnt' it? Craaaaaaap, aall those wasted (and very hard earned) chunks and slabs.

I might get the prepare to die edition for PS3

I might restart with a new character... I wasted several points levelling less useful stats like intelligence and resistance, not realising they were almost an irrelevance for my eventual build. Then again, I've put nigh-on sixty hours getting through to the end of the game and I don't know if I can be arsed to start all over, the thought of going back to starting weaponry makes me feel sad.

Yeah... resistance is the stat that nobody ever puts points into because it's pretty much useless.
For what it's worth though all you need to effectively wield a lightning weapon is the bare minimum in STR and DEX to equip your weapon of choice, from there you can pretty much do anything as it won't affect your damage. Most people who go with elemental weapon builds cap out their stamina bar (40 END) and dump the rest in VIT, personally I hate it because it's cheesy as fuck and for a while it was all you ever saw in PvP but it's impossible to deny how good it is, at least until you get into NG+. Point is if you choose to keep going you're not really at any disadvantage PvE wise.

On the other hand don't be afraid of restarting, you'll probably fly through the earlier parts of the game and I like having goals for my characters.
General guide for planning a build is:

1. Decide on a PvP, PvE or Co-Op focus.
   
2. Choose an ultimate Soul Level goal, 120 is the norm for PvP on PS3, co-op depends on where you want to help people, PvE is as high or low as you want it to be.
   
3. Choose weapons, spells and armor. Important things to note are how much things weigh and required stats to equip them. http://darksouls.wikidot.com/ has pretty much anything you could ever need for this.
   
4. Plan your stats around your desired items. Start off with the minimum STR and DEX for your weapon, pick a shield that falls into that bracket. If you decided to use magic, get just enough attunement to equip all the spells you want and the minimum required INT or FTH (if going with sorceries or miracles, pyromancy requires no stats) for your spells. You may want to get more of that stat depending on your chosen Catalyst or Talisman, check the wiki for details. With END you either want to go straight for 40, to max your stamina, or do some maths and figure out how much you'll need to equip everything and be under 25% or 50% weight, taking into account Havels Ring, Dark Wood Grain Ring, Ring of Favor and Protection etc... You may want to do both.
   
5. Fuck RES.

http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/ is a really useful site for planning this out, you can input your desired stats (little button in the top left) and it'll tell you the optimal starting class for you. Then you can plug in all your gear and see all the derived stats from your build.

I'd post more but I have to go to work, good luck.

Cheers, very much appreciated.

Can't help but think that level 120 would feel grossly over powered for the entirety of the single player game, but I know that PvP is a different kettle of fish - I've had guys invade me and kill me in seconds, and I've also had the oppsite, those that flail away and fall in one hit from my greatsword.

Most level 120 PvP goes on at the kiln, an area pretty much straight before the final boss of the game. It's an extremely high level for NG but considering everything (enemy health, damage and soul reward) is boosted in each successive NG+ it's not all too high in the scheme of things.

Oh and I forgot to mention before - choose an upgrade/enchant for your weapon that matches your stats. If you go high (at least 40) INT or FTH you'd probably want Magic or Divine enchants, 45+ STR upgrading a weapon with good STR scaling (S or A) to +15 Basic or +5 if it's a boss/unique drop. Same thing goes for DEX.

And all leftover stats should be put into VIT for obvious reasons, the only time you'd consider not doing this is if you were at 50 VIT, you start to get diminishing returns on all stats after that point.

I'm at the Kiln now, taking the opportunity to farm the Black Knights there for those precious titanite chunks they seem to drop with alarming regularity. I'm unsure what to do now though - restart all over, or take my current build through NG+. Restart means I'll eventualy be stronger than I am now, but I'll need to start from scratch and the though of losing all my weaponry is a huge drag, but taking forward a build I know to be only 80% efficient seems equally foolhardy.

Pity there's no option to undo your levelling and simply then allow you to reassign any misplaced soul levels, that'd give me best of both worlds.

Ha, Gwyn beat the holy hell out of me. First time I've died in ages, cost me around 300,000 souls and 20 odd humanity I'd gathered.

Finally beat it. Gwyn was the most agressive boss I've seen in a game since... well, probably ever. He's relentless, giving no time to try and heal yourself, and blocking merely one-shots your stamina bar. He can be parried and riposted, but the damage inflicted was fairly minor, at least in comparison to the half a health bar I take if I get the timing wrong.

Oh, and I lit the bonfire. NG+, here we come.

EDIT: The Undead Asylum, I remember being a tough opening. I just walked right through it, beat the Asylum Demon in three hits and I'm in Lordran proper inside three minutes. Hoo boy.

I thought it was supposed to get harder after NG+?

Enemies have more health and hit harder, but I'm as far as the Undead Burg and thus far the extra health still doesn't count for much - I'm still one-shotting just about everything. That said, the Taurus Demon put up more of a fight that I'd have liked, though that was just as likely my fault for trying to trade blow for blow with it instead of using the more traditional method.

I'd imagine enemies later on, those who can take a bit of punishment, will be noticably more troublesome.

Kaede wrote:

I thought it was supposed to get harder after NG+?

If you know how to beat them without taking damage yourself there's essentially no difference. If you fuck up though...

First time through was no different though, not really. If you know what you're doing and can read your enemies, even the larger bosses are easy; it's just that if you do make a mistake, the game punishes you ruthlessly, most bosses capable of killing you in only a couple of blows.

Just rung the first bell having easily beaten the Gargoyles, so took a diversion through Darkroot Garden and went to fight Sif again. Even at level 77, he one-shotted me. Note to self; I can't tank the big hits any more.

PC version unlocked about an hour ago and is ranked higher on the sales charts than the new Counter-Strike that was released on the 21st. Hopefully the next game in the series will be on PC from the start as that, along with the petitions that spurred the port in the first place, show that there's a serious demand for these games.

Been playing a lot of this the past day or so, it's amazing how much easier everything is when you know how to handle it, the enemies that gave me the most trouble were, of all things, the two lowly black knights in the burg+parish.

Completed up to Sens and have also completed New Londo Ruins (up until you need story items to progress), Valley of Drakes, Darkroot Basin and the majority of Darkroot Garden without breaking SL30. Estoc builds are so much fun, you pretty much go around parrying everything and riposting for absurd damage with a Basic upgraded weapon and some sort of temporary enchantment (fire/lightning resins, magic/faith buffs).

After I finish this run I think I'll make a SL125 PvP build with a +15 Uchigatana, some pyromancies and sorcery for Crystal Magic Weapon, Crystal Soul Spear and Homing Crystal Soulmass, just need to decide on armor and rings.

Killed the Four Kings in record time and took a side trip to the Great Hollow and Ash Lake, also did some spots of PvP around the place and killed someone who, considering his absurd health pool for SL40 and the number of souls and humanity I got from him, was probably a hacker by kicking him off a cliff. Thanks to that guy I'm now SL50 and probably won't be leveling up any more until I get into NG+.

The four kings were one of those bosses that a lot of people seemed to struggle with, but I beat on my first attempt. Bed of Chaos though... cheap bastard. That said, NG+ Four Kings were far tougher, some moves actually capable of one-shotting me even at SL70.

I'm debating whether or not I try a new character or sell the game... yes, I know, not something I'd usually do, but the Ltd Edition I bought is still fetching good money on a certain online auction site, so I can probably sell the game for only three or four quid less than I paid for it. Seventy hours playtime for three quid? Hard to argue with that kind of value.

I was expecting Caramelldansen.

I restarted, chose Pyromancer again because I like the fact I start at SL1 and get fire magic without pumping the INT stat. It's good fun having so little health again because even the early game enemies have a very real chance of killing you if you make a mistake. Suffice to say so far though it's been a breeze. I do miss some of my previous character's weaponry though, even if it would have been grossly overpowered for this run through.

I ended up turning that other character into the uchigatana build I was talking about but, after finding it extremely boring, deleted it and started again. This time I'm aiming for a Lifehunt Scythe build which is, along with Priscilla's Dagger, the best weapon to inflict bleeding in the game. It's also a lot more interesting because if you attack too quickly with it you'll end up making yourself bleed so you're forced to keep a strong secondary weapon you can swap to which, in turn, results in more variety in your combat.

Anyways, beat Seath just then and am going on to the Demon Ruins, gonna try and finish both Solaire and Siegmeyer's quest lines in the most positive ways possible this runthrough.