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Comments
So Nintendo has been hyping up that Coin Rush thing from New Super Mario Bros. 2 like there's some literal gold at the end of the metaphorical rainbow when you collect about a million. So, what happens when you do just that?
I think one essential issue with Fire Emblem games in general is the frustration factor. The "losing dudes permanently" thing is a neat idea, but I don't think any of the games have carried it particularly gracefully. What has to be done is the enforcement of autosaves as well as easing off the difficulty in general, plus a better enforcement of the theme of sacrifice.
^They did ease off the difficulty, you played the easiest one. They turned it up again by Radiant Dawn because fans weren't happy.
That and I think you're misunderstanding what the perma-death function enforces.
I'm currently playing the first FE on GBA (whatever number that is -- the first one released in the West, anyway), Sacred Stones and Shadow Dragon in parallel. There's a few things that bother me, although I think the root of it is suicidal enemy behaviour. It makes sense that enemies go for the most vulnerable of your units, but not so much when it means certain death for them. There's a kind of metasense there -- their death doesn't set the game challenges back, but any death in your party sets you back permanently. So it's kind of frustrating to try and stay in Fire Emblem Logic, where an enemy will kill a healer even if it means opening up their most powerful unit to certain death.
The related issue is that if you're not sure what the best cause of action is, your best bet is to fill chokepoints with high-defense units and back them up with ranged units. Sensible, but also boring and tedious. So there's there's often a choice between certainly boring and tedious, or possibly fun and exciting or highly frustrating.
Essentially, it's not so much that the game is difficult. It's more that the difficulty comes in odd curveballs or that countering that difficulty requires the use of bog-standard, boring tactics. Fire Emblem in general is much more fun when it has momentum and movement, forcing some decent thinking and working against a disadvantageous position. I think a good example of this is the "refused flank" maneuver, wherein you create an L-shape around a heavily wounded unit to prevent it from being finished off. I discovered that particular move in a moment of desperation, but it was highly gratifying to see it work and buy me enough time to retreat to a more advantageous position.
In fact, a lot of the more interesting tactical factors for me are the use of your units as manipulators, which goes entirely awry when the AI always decides to go for the most vulnerable unit and you misjudge what the most vulnerable unit actually is.
I guess what I'm saying here is that Fire Emblem could stand to be more "human".
^Out of curiosity, is it better or worse than the Monster Hunter "Claw"?
Hey, R/B/Y Gengar was kickass.
Gate of Illusion Gate of Illusion Gate of Illusion Gate of Illusion ahuehuehuehuehuehuehuehueyoufoolhuehuehuehue
Everybody, you should play this. Apart from the fact that you play as Waluigi, the game itself is quite fun.
Spend a few hours straight playing MMX5 last night. Asides from Duff McWhalen's stage (Too long, too boring, boss is too easy), it's not the trainwreck X6 was. I was still annoyed by a few things in it, it's one of my personal weaker X series games.
X1 is still my favorites. :V
Okay, so!
Finally up to the final boss in Dark Souls. But before I take him on, I'm stuck in a preparatory phase; I need a white slab of titanite, a fair amount of twinking titanite and as much humanity as I can get my hands on. My character is currently level 90, and that's where I'll leave him until NG+.
As for the build, it's 20 vitality, 40 endurance, 16 strength, 16 attunement and 50 faith as far as "active" stats go. I suppose I'll be grinding the end of the Tomb of the Giants for a while, given there's only one enemy type that drops white titanite slabs, there's only five of them and they have a low drop rate, even taking the gold serpent ring into account.
Which was the item that I shouldn't take at the beginning, again?
It's the best choice for non-first characters, though. My main character has a pendant, as recommended by the lead developer. He might just be fucking with us, though, as no-one has any idea what the pendant actually does. The metagame of Dark Souls has been worked out for a few months now, but I daresay there's still a handful of secrets hidden in the game that no-one has found.
Dark Souls is just one of those games that is absolutely rock solid in design and high in polish, but it has just enough exploitable glitches and secrets (implicit or otherwise) that it just begs more exploration. Always.
I think the developer said that if you do something with it, you can find out your character's backstory. Not that anyone has found it.
Anyway, the item I'd recommend for a newcomer would be either black firebombs or twin humanities.
And for classes, Pyromancer makes the first half of the game a lot easier, which is good when you're first adjusting and haven't gotten the hang of the leveling system yet.
Incidentally, if you do go pyromancer, the pyromancy flame claims that it scales damage with intelligence. This is true, but it's referring to the pathetic secondary punch attack, not the actual spells.
The Pyromancer is a technically efficient class to begin with, but I also feel it's kind of boring. Then again, while I certainly try to make my characters effective, each one has a sort of theme going on, and their starting class is based on said theme. I think that's essentially a good way to do things, especially since none of the starting classes are actually bad -- some are just more forgiving than others.
I suppose newcomers ought to avoid the Wanderer, Hunter, Thief and Deprived, though. Even with those classes, you can acquire solid gear early on that can last you a significant amount of the game depending on your build. And perhaps this is merely personal, but I love the Thief's starting dagger. That bleeding damage can be invaluable, and very appropriate on a fast-striking, low-damage weapon.
But seriously, play a Knight like all the cool kids do.
Naaaaaw.
"BURN EVERYTHING!
" is not boring.
alex is just prejudiced against witchraft
What's Hollowing, and how often should I Reverse it?
Hollowing is your decayed state. When you're not hollow and die, you become hollow. You only have to be unhollow to kindle bonfires or summon allies for boss fights.
That's a funny way of spelling "ready and armed".
Also, while you're Hollowed, enemies drop less items and your resistances are a bit lower. The more Humanity you have in your counter (upper right corner), the higher your luck with item finding will be, and your resistances will also rise. Being in your "mortal" form is slightly advantageous, but it's not worth insisting on being like that given the amount of Humanity it'll cost you to reverse the Hollowing every time you die.
You should basically just go with the flow. If you die, try to recover your souls and Humanity, but don't worry about reclaiming your mortal form unless you want to kindle a bonfire or summon an ally. Just as ClockworkINUH said.
I thought it was just humanity count that affected that.
Perhaps it is? I'm not entirely sure. But if mortality makes a difference, then I think it's subtle -- something like +20 to your item finding rate (when compared to the standard 100, whatever that 100 means).
Yeah, definitely more efficient to just hold your humanity then.
Incidentally, the build I use as a pyromancer is to get a greatsword ASAP, then upgrade my stats until it's useable one-handed. Besides that, I mostly stick to endurance and vitality (mostly the former) and only upgrade strength more when I get a better greatsword.
Also, Chaos covenant is best covenant.
Being hollow vs human does not have any effect on item drops. Carrying humanity does, with 10 humanity increasing your item drop rate by 110. I'm pretty sure item drop rate is just a percentage, so having 410 item drop rate (the maximum) would mean you get about 4 times as many drops.
Anyway, the only reason to reverse hollowing is to kindle bonfires or do PVP. Don't summon phantoms for co-op, since they'll just beat the boss for you and it won't be any fun.
Unless there's a boss you're stuck on (sadly, the only bosses that's likely to happen on for extended periods don't have summonable NPCs).
sunbro 4lyfe
Also, I've been checking some people's builds online and found some interesting stuff. I'm a veteran of Demon's Souls, so I'm very much used to the "all or nothing" builds that were necessary for PvP in that game -- neglecting most of your stats in favour of a small selection of exceptional ones. Dark Souls certainly goads players towards more balanced builds, with stuff like C/C damage scaling for regular swords and special weapons that require reasonably high strength and dexterity to wield, but builds that are spread out still strike me as inefficient.
For instance, the Black Knight greatsword requires 32 strength and, I think, 18 dexterity. My current main character has 16 strength and 12 dexterity, using weapons like the claymore and bastard sword. That's a total of 22 stat points in difference, which can be spent of other stats -- especially something like faith, which will scale with a divine weapon. So those extra 22 points put into faith will give me good scaled damage with a weapon that's easier to acquire, easier and cheaper to upgrade and geared directly towards my build, not to mention faster.
All things being equal, I'll be dealing more damage at a faster rate and at less stamina cost. Scaled damage is pretty much king in this game, especially when weapons reach B, A or even S(!!!) levels of scaling. Raw damage is important, too, mind, but a weapon with high raw damage and good scaling will outdo a weapon with excellent raw damage and no scaling on the right build.
Then you get insane stuff, like Ornstein's spear, which requires 24/24 in strength and dexterity, and then scales based on dexterity and faith. What kind of insanely spread build will have 24 strength, 24 dexterity and have enough faith to make the scaling in any way significant? You'd have to cut into endurance and ignore vitality altogether to pull that off, which would just end in a build that can't attack for long, can't block much and is very limited when it comes to dodging and heavy armours. Ornstein's spear might be an incredible weapon in theory, but its requirements and scaling ensure that only particularly inefficient builds will get any use out of it.
But I'm ranting so
The problem there is that the Black Knight greatsword isn't very efficient. Go for the Man-Serpent sword for an efficient greatsword. Does a lot of damage, only requires 24 strength, and when upgraded scales on strength at A level. At +15 it has a base damage of 275, and just having the stats to use it gets you a lot more.
Between it, Pyromancy and Havel's armor, I was pretty much set for my first runthrough.
Is it bad if I'm getting killed by pairs of skleletons? They're four-shotting me.