Sometimes I‘m playing a video game and even my somewhat-grown-ass brain can’t figure out some stuff, and to make matters worse the official Nintendo Helpline is no longer in service! (who's gonna spend the money for that anyway)
But I hate just going to Google for the answer. That's cheating. Sometimes you just need a hint. Not the solution, but a nudge in the right direction.
I suspect every video game in existence has been finished by someone in this forum, and I think it would be cool to give each other kind of cryptic advice. I don't know if any of you need help with anything right now (or ever), but feel free to use this thread to ask for help if/when you need it. Now...
I love this idea! Especially since I’m stuck in Shiren 5.
cross posting my post in the Roguelike here… help me Insert Credit!
@antillese#17265
OK, so this is self closed, but it took two months of coming back to it. Turns out it was a sliding tile room, but the tiles slide super slowly. I decided to go up to the edge of the room and just hold on the wait button. The monsters jiggled around a lot and then... a tile moved in the back! So I waited more and more and eventually a tile slid over to where I could step on it. I dunno, I’m kinda annoyed about it but also very excited that I actually get to play the game.
- Acquire the ZWEIHANDER, which can be found near the beginning of the game in Firelink Shrine, in front of one of the large gravestones leading to the Catacombs.
- Equip the ZWEIHANDER in your main weapon slot, and wield it with 2 hands.
- Any time an enemy gets within 5-10 metres of you, point the Left Control Stick towards them and mash the Light Attack Button until they are dead.
From there, you can follow a simple flow chart:
**A. If you cannot kill an average enemy in 1-3 swings of the ZWEIHANDER:** Level up Strength, or, invest in upgrades to the ZWEIHANDER itself at Andre the Blacksmith. The latter is especially effective as upgrading weapons in Dark Souls increases the weapon's damage scaling effect, meaning each point in Strength gives you more damage, along with upgrading the weapon just increasing its damage directly.
**B. If you can trade blows with enemies effectively but they tend to kill you faster than you can kill them:** Level up Vitality to increase your max health. See also, **A.**
**I can hit enemies before they hit me but if they stagger or stun me I always die:** Level up Endurance and seek out heavier armor, particularly ones with a high value in **Poise,** which will increase your ability to suffer damage without being staggered or stunned.
**There are enemies that I can't stunlock:** Lock on to them and use the ZWEIHANDER's Heavy Attack. That will solve that particular problem.
**I can't play Dark Souls without a shield:** No problem! Level up your Strength to 24 so that you can wield the ZWEIHANDER effectively with 1 hand.
Insert Credit folks; I need help deciding if I should pick up Monster Hunter Rise as my first monster hunter game? How do I know if I should spend the 60 bucks?
@kylebrizzown#17400 I'd say go for it. The MH games are at their most new player-friendly around release, since a lot of non-obsessives are jumping on board.
@kylebrizzown#17400 Seconding to say go for it, although, World would be an equally good choice if you like the idea of chewing through a mountain of content and getting your bearings on the series more or less firmly within singleplayer. Multiplayer in World at the moment might be fairly quiet until higher level play.
@Gaagaagiins#17404 That's a good call-out. Especially because I think World is on GamePass right now. Might try to get some reps in over there and decide if I want to try to get in for day 1 of Rise next month.
@kylebrizzown#17409 That‘s a good call, especially if it’s on GamePass or you can pick it up for cheap.
_World_ put in a lot of work to make the series more approachable without sacrificing much if any of its idiosyncracies, and core gameplay has been fairly normalized for just about the past decade or so (although _World_ imo has the tightest controls yet). And, for sure, _Rise_ will be most similar to _World_ in terms of features and overall gameplay feel than it will to past releases.
All you really gotta know is that the Slinger/Clutch Claw stuff in _World_ and the Wirebug stuff in _Rise_ are these entries' "gimmicks" so to speak. Most of the core gameplay will be near identical, if you end up liking a certain weapon, for instance, it will end up playing and feeling very similarly in _Rise_ anyway.
I guess to sum it up, if you like _World,_ you'll definitely like _Rise,_ just expect to have to learn the new gameplay gimmicks.
@Cheddahz#17416 I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but also kind of not.
What made it click for me in my first successful playthrough of a Souls game (Dark Souls II I think? Actually I kinda can't remember anymore) was when someone shed more light on how stats and gear interact and how important it is to level up in a way that prioritizes weapon damage guided by the weapons you like using. As soon as you find a weapon you like the feel of, find out how to get the most out of it statwise by looking at its scaling and kind of basing your level ups on that. And always prioritize your current favourite weapon for upgrades. Armor upgrades are much less effectual, especially if we're not talking about chest or leg pieces.
Also consider that on your travels you will find weapons similar to the ones that you like, which may just be better overall at similar upgrade/stat levels, or have cool added effects or differences in the moveset that you end up preferring. But finding your first favourite weapon will generally put you on the path to greater success.
_Dark Souls_ is a funny game in that I think it's easiest to understand how it works as a new player if you prioritize offensive stat growth while focusing on a defensive playstyle. Being careful and deliberate with a shield up 90% of the time you're anywhere near an enemy and keeping a one handed weapon on at all times will keep you alive, until you have to fight back and actually win fights. It's a trap newer players fall in because they haven't properly prioritized offensive stats out of a generalized fear of the game, and in being too careful every fight ends up being a duel where you're trying to sneak in small hits on an enemy who can kill you way faster than you can kill it. A playstyle much more conducive to learning how the game works is one where your offensive stats and weapon allow you to keep your distance and staying defensive, but also knowing when you can blow your whole stamina meter and end fights decisively. That is way easier when you know it will take 2-3 hits to kill an enemy than 6-8. With faster weapons and keeping your shield up you can still sneak hits in too of course, but you are much better served by making sure those hits will count for as much as you can (helps also to make careful note about how much damage a shield actually mitigates, with 100% mitigation being relatively rare). At any rate, it takes quite a while for pumping points into Vitality to really translate into being much harder to kill, and unless I'm confusing this with a different Souls game leveling up any stat will give you a modest HP boost either way, so yeah, I think the best way to really get acclimated with _Dark Souls_ is to make sure you are as deadly to enemies as they are to you. Combat will never not be dangerous so the main way to be in less danger is to end combat as quickly as possible.
@Cheddahz#17416 One final tip about weapon growth and stat scaling, scaling increasing as you level a weapon is true of most weapons… some increase less than others and some don‘t increase at all because they don’t have attribute scaling. If you‘ve heard of the Drake Sword and know that it’s a common noob trap to stick to using it and eventually get frustrated because it‘s powerful as soon as you get it but doesn’t grow after, that's why, it has no scaling.
Even if you're a total purist I highly recommend looking up how a weapon you like grows as it is upgraded so you can plan accordingly. It's also no problem if you like a weapon when you get it, but don't like how it scales. There's likely something roughly equivalent moveset-wise out there with better scaling.
@Gaagaagiins#17420 this is all absolutely correct. You can also cheat by telling us which game you’re playing and which weapon you want to use and we can tell you exactly what to do to make that weapon viable. Every weapon in a souls game is completely viable, and just because a weapon is fancier does not mean it’s necessarily better. Like before when we were talking about the Zweihander - which is the most basic ultra greatsword in the game and literally 100 feet from the hub bonfire in DS1, is absolutely great in almost every situation. In contrast, many boss weapons have fun gimmicks or look cool but are not any better (and are often much worse) than basic starter weapons.
This is why fashion souls is a thing. There really is something to be said for finding a cool _looking_ setup, and then just using stats to make that gear work.
@CidNight#17422 Yep. The vast majority of weapons are “viable” for sure, but some roughly equivalent weapons do end up being strictly better numerically speaking, on account of simply having better scaling. But yeah, those examples are relatively rare, it‘s a totally different sort of weapon progression system from most games like it, and, I’d say none of those strictly not as good weapons are not viable, and the difference is usually more apparent once you're min-maxing already.