Dark Souls 3 is out. Anyone playing it?

Dark Souls 3 has been out for a while, and I thought this forum was pretty into the series from earlier threads. I'm kinda surprised no one else made a thread for this game.

Honestly, it looks the same as ever, but at least they took my idea of implementing weapon skills into the game, but did it in a rather hap-hazard fashion and it seems too many weapons have the same weapon skills... much like so many weapons still have the same limited animations and move sets.

Anywho. I did find it nice that they introduced an ultra-greatsword that's DEX based and did come up with some unique attacks, but it seems like a lot of the balance has changed. Great-type weapons don't seem quite as dominating as before and it appears a lot of people are upset by that.

i made a thread about ds3 a million years ago, but i've yet to update it all lol. anywho, i've beaten it once with my faith/dex guy. overall, it's definitely one of my favorite Souls game to date. the bosses are pretty great, even the gimmick bosses are nice with none being Bed of Chaos level. the weapon skills are kinda hit-or-miss for me though. some i love like the lothric holy sword and others are meh like the wolnir sword.

i've recently been playing through the game as a sorcery-only character since my friends were constantly whining about how bad magic is this time around. after getting to the twin princes fight, i'd have to say that i strongly disagree with them. i breezed through the game with only like 3 big problems being the bosses with high magic defense. the deacons, aldrich, and oceiros gave me such a hard time just because i did so little damage to them. other than that though it's been a blast playing a sorcerer.

now i'm trying out a primarily bow character and it's been taking a bit to get used to. bows now have roll attacks, but they're pretty weak in comparison to a normal shot (about 30-40% the damage). the weapon skill for my current bow, the shortbow, lets me shoot multiple arrows in quick succession at the cost of reduced damage. one thing that worries me though is that i have to buy my attacks. granted arrows are cheap for the most part, but the higher end arrows like moonlight arrows are quite expensive. still gonna stick with it though and see how it pans out.

I've been thinking of trying out a build that's probably not going to be very PvP-friendly at all and requires so much late game material that it probably won't be too useful by the time I get everything. But I wanted to try going with a heavy Nameless King/Sun King style build. That means, a mostly Dex-focused, high faith (probably around 40 for Sunlight Spear) and a couple of attunement slots to round out the magic (Sunlight Spear, Lightning Stake). Since the Sword-spear is incredibly disappointing, I would pick up the Storm Drake Sword instead and round it out with the Nameless King armor. Only thing I would need then would be to pick a chime and a shield to go with the full set and trying to make it somewhat lore-worthy.

All of this requires a ton of late game material, so how I build on my way up there and how few bosses I try to take down before I get the rest of the gear is what I'm struggling with. I'm not even sure its possible to trade away weapons or souls anymore, either.

All in all, it seems like it would be easier to build towards Artorias and round him out with either Farron spells, or try a quality build with it.

I'm of course playing it, right now I am on my first run of the game, in Archdragon Peak.

The áreas are lot more tought but the bosses are all too much easy. In DS2 almost every boss took me 10+ attempts (except the late game ones that I blew with piromancies) and in Bloodborne bosses took me 10-20 attempts each (except First Vicar that took me 40-45 and the orphan that took me only 2 LOL). In DS3 I beat every boss at 2-3 attempts except for Champion Gundyr that took me 15 or so.

Since I used to expend most part of my gameplays trying to beat bosses this game is feeling terrible short. I beat Dragonslayer on Lhoric castle, I'm doing archdragon peak and I've been told there is no much game remaining and I am only 30 hours into the game! At this pace I will be finished at 35, (DS2 took me 67 hours to beat).

Started with the intention of doing hex-dex build, but hexes require stupidly hightly requirements, I started dex-int with some faith but re-especed to dex-faith with some int just so I could use Gnaw XD From what I tested all magics suck in general this time. So now I'm just focusing in dex. Never in the entire game felt I lacked damage, specially on bosses that have low HP this edition, so puting more dex doesn't seem very different but puting more in faith or int seems a waste and my charácter is a dark monk samurái so I don't need heavy armor. May be I will try to get more stamina (although I don't lack it either since I use katana and don't require much)

NeclordX said:

From what I tested all magics suck in general this time.

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magic is pretty meh unless you've a lot of investment into int/fth. i literally put every point i had into int and attunement up until after i beat dragonslayer armor. late game i was getting 1-shotted by normal enemies so i had to spend some points in vigor. i'm also fairly confident that magic this time around is more akin to how it was in bloodborne, being that magic kept scaling all the way to 99 with no soft caps. i plan on testing this out, but at the moment i've only 50int. now that i have some health, i'll be dumping all my points into int again.

also magic is pretty rough on NG since all your good spells is late game. when you head to NG+ though, you breeze right through it like this :

Windstar said:

All in all, it seems like it would be easier to build towards Artorias and round him out with either Farron spells, or try a quality build with it.

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farron flashsword is by far my favorite spell in the game. just by reading the description, you'd think it was just a quicker soul greatsword. however it's actually got R1 combos, rolling R1s, running R1s, etc. it cannot reposte nor does is have heavy attacks either (because your R2 is just a whack with the staff).

Going pure sorcery is unglodly until at least higher levels/later game. I've been doing a glass cannon build (what will be a hyper mode build once I pick up the red tearstone/morion blade) and have beat all mandatory bosses except for Yhorm, Princes and Inferno. It's an absolute nightmare when the Sorcery rings aren't until the last 1/4 of the game. Once you hit the dungeon you get a massive boost in viability, though, since you can pick up the Bellowing Dragoncrest ring, Magic Clutch ring and the candlestick all at around the same time which is almost a double damage boost.

But here's where I get kind of annoyed about this shit. It's basically an absolute necessity to wear 3 rings JUST to do damage (obviously 4 with hyper mode), plus you must have the candlestick too. These are all things you HAVE to do to make sorcery relevant in any way, shape or form. And even then it's underwhelming unless you've dumped ~60 points into int. All of these things combined means that Sorcery is just god-awful until at least the last 1/3rd of the game where it just becomes "okay". Now, I haven't gotten the Crystal Magic shit but once again, that is entirely end game stuff.

Here's an example of how stupid this is. So with Aldrich I was having some degree of trouble with this build (just one of his little balls of light he shits out would do half life) and I could barely do damage at all to him. So I just went and equipped Chaos Bed Vestiges in a desperate attempt to fuck him in the fucker. That shit hit him for 1500 fucking damage and casts faster than Soul Arrow. Like, I get that he's weak to fire. But this was with a +0 flame and only 10 Faith.

Come on, From. Why even play as Sorcery? I'll be able to comment on end game sorcery soon (particularly the hyper mode version) but that's a joke. It's so much easier to get all the required things to make pyromancy deadly as hell, AND it scales with int/faith so you can use dark magic to its maximum effectiveness too should you need it. But the GEAR for pyromancy is much easier to attain too. Basically once you get to Old Demon King you've got everything you need. OP spells, all your rings and all that good shit.

Either way, tl;dr if you're doing a Sorcery build don't even bother until you've damn near beat the game unless you're doing a hybrid build or want a challenge. Just do pyromancy/dark until you have all your gear and Soul Stream. Even then, I doubt it's worth it. It might be good with hyper mode, though.

P.S. Farron Flashsword is your best friend. Goddamn is that spell good. It's what kept me going.

unless you're doing a hybrid build

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By experience I can tell you that its even worse with hybrid XD In fact when I said sorcery sucked I meant it from the hybrid perspective. IF you want to properly use magic or miracles at least. If you want a hybrid which spells are only for show its viable enough.

I mean, If you invest in int or faith and pick a weapon and infuse it with cristal or blessed you can do awesome amounts of damage. You will have your hybrid build, you will do damage on melee, just don't expect anything from your spells XD Although now that I think on it probably "Elemental build" would be more fitting than calling it hybrid.

BTW Sharing fashion souls

Im at the boss on the tower with all these knights which kills you with one hit lol, need to grind some more

lothric castle?also the knights 1-shot you because you have 99hollowing ( i assume you have 99), and their buffs do more damage if your hollowed......so i hear. i have yet to test it since i keep forgetting to cure hollowing before running in

CappuccinoJak said:

lothric castle?also the knights 1-shot you because you have 99hollowing ( i assume you have 99), and their buffs do more damage if your hollowed......so i hear. i have yet to test it since i keep forgetting to cure hollowing before running in

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DOH! That explain a lot of things XDDD Didn't know why those guys did so much damage. I'm hollow lv99 (literally)

I reached Lothoric castle boss without having to grind one single time to level up in the entire game since this time the bosses were pretty easy. But the Princes are officially the bane of my existence, not even summoning NPC can win them, and I do some serious damages but there is always a point where he kills me in just one hit. I guess is time to grind some levels. Well, may be is not that hard of a boss, in previous DSII and BB 15 attempts for a boss would look like the normal thing, but in this game 15 attempts look like an eternity XD

Grinding? In this game? Why? Stat-ups have such a minimal effect on overall growth that its generally pointless to grind. You're better off just upgrading a weapon since that will have a large impact on your performance over anything else.

True, I grinded and was totally pointless, Lothoric raped me at lv 78 when I reached him for the first time and raped me again at lv87 when I returned after grinding 10 levels XDDDD At the very end killed him thanks to RNGesus. Just after that killed the final boss on 3rd attempt, is a joke compared to Lothoric.

This game is infinitely better than DS2 but is also infinitely shorter. NOT saying the game is short, it took me 37 hours beat it, but compared to the previous one that after the four big boss you were only half game is certainly shorter (took me 67 hours to beat DS2).

Level design, visuals, music, gameplay, everything is excelent in this game, my only real complain is that it lacks presentation, showmanship. At this point we are used to the setting so it feels a bit of generic fantasy it lacks moments that make you "wow" in the form or cutscenes or whatever. For example in BB that presentation for father Gascoigne or when they snatch you, that kind of stuff that makes you feel the experience rather than just playing the game.

Still I'd say its a 9/10

Now I think I'm going to try a pure strengh build next.

A strength build will beat the game for you. Get yourself a heavy broadsword +10 and a greatshield and gg ez. Throw in a fume ugs and the dragonslayer greataxe and the game will be a joke lol

so my archer character was doing fine right up until i hit the deacons. i did fine enough damage, but i'd also get to the DPS race at the end where if you don't kill 'em fast enough your curse meter starts filling up. so i had to upgrade and use my back-up dagger to get through them =/

fukou_da_man said:

A strength build will beat the game for you. Get yourself a heavy broadsword +10 and a greatshield and gg ez. Throw in a fume ugs and the dragonslayer greataxe and the game will be a joke lol

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Right now I'm using the butcher machete and its incredible how much this thing wrecks. Although I guess that knowing where is everything and what to do first helps lot more than the weapon XD

Anyway, you did a heavy build? How much vitality should I aim for? My objective is wear one of the heavy armors (executioner probably) and use Yhorm machete and if posible dragonslayer shield. How much vitality will I need for that?

so the puncture bow skill seems either misleading or not very effective. it says it's supposed to pierce through shields and while it appeared to work in the early game, it's seems to be useless late game. early on against the shielded hollows in high wall it did great, but against the pontiff knights in irithyl it barely did a dent. i assume that the shield material determines the effectiveness of puncture since the hollows used wood and the pontiffs used metal shielding.

im about to enter anor londo so i'll test that out on the silver knights. really hope im wrong about this though, bc=ecause if that's the case then i've waste too many shards on my longbow.

so i just saw why aldrich's soul gives the lifehunt scythe miracle.....he uses it. out of all my characters and my time co-oping aldrich i have never seen him use it once. thought i knew him like the back of my hand right up until he slashed me with it. kinda cool and sheds light on why his soul drops lifehunt scythe.

He only really uses it at certain ranges. Did you know you can use twisted wall of light to become invincible to his arrow attack? Also shortbow>longbow.

fukou_da_man said:

He only really uses it at certain ranges. Did you know you can use twisted wall of light to become invincible to his arrow attack? Also shortbow>longbow.

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whaaaaaat? i never would've even thought of that since they're arrows, although i've used it on his soul spears.

i only use the longbow for shields, but it's kinda bleh for that too. got the darkmoon bow and i was hoping the skill would be somewhat flashy or good or....something at least. it's basically just puncture with some added magic atk it seems. also puncture has god awful tracking, the pontiff knights were able to avoid it by simply side strafing

Yeah, I tried making my magic build in a way so it could use the Darkmoon Bow for kind of a basic attack. Boy, was I disappointed in that.