That's really cool, I think I'm going to go get The Name of the Wind then so I can read it and see if I can get into the series as well.
That's awesome you picked up Dark Souls, what platform did you get it on?
Wait I lied, you find Havel's Set of armor in the Duke's Archives, nevermind.
Rodney you're the definition of a tank lol. Are you wearing the whole Stone Armor set? I think that set looks really awesome. Have you come across Havel's Set in Anor Londo yet? I bet Havel's armor is something you'd probably be interested in, it's like the Stone Armor set but on steroids. Super high defense ratings and poise.
No problem, one of the best parts of Dark Souls for me was interacting with the community. I was lucky to have really helpful DS veterans around to counsel with when I was having trouble. Chris Yarger and some others over at 1UP helped me figure out a strategy to get through the Anor Londo bosses back when I was going through it the first time, we should get him in here to talk about it with us. If you're interested here's an old Dark Souls Diary I wrote about Anor Londo and the final boss battle:
Ornstein and Smough are really difficult to fight together and I always equated the battle to running into a brick wall, and then trying to find any small crack in the wall that you can squeeze through. You said you went into Anor Londo with a Lv.50 Warrior right? You're probably a little bit over 50 now right? I went into the Anor Londo boss battle the first time with a Lv.80 Warrior character I think and it didn't help at all, they're brutal no matter what and it took many deaths for me to get my strategy right.
Since Ornstein does huge lightning damage it can be beneficial to use the Thunder Stoneplate Ring which increases lightning defense +50 pts. It could help to use any stamina recovery items like the Grass Crest Shield, Cloranthy Ring, green blossom consumable item, and the Mask of the Child. All those increase speed of stamina recovery and the effects all stack too. When I played the bosses I used the Ring of Favor and Protection which increases health, stamina, and equip load +20%, you get it if you rescued Knight Lautrec from a jail cell early in the game and followed his quest line, eventually killing him in Anor Londo right outside the boss area.
Even though I tried to equip all the best items I had, I still got destroyed a lot and it took a lot of shaking and baking to kill both the bosses. The pillars in the room are one of the things that saved my life. In the battle the big guy will crush pillars with his hammer simply through collateral damage. Try to separate them the best you can and fight them one at a time, and occasionally if there's a broken pillar in between you and one of them you can get a couple arrows off at them as they strike ineffectively at you but hit the pillar in between. That helped me at times.
I haven't read either of the Kingkiller Chronicle books yet but I think I should try to get them. George RR Martin, the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, really loves those books so I bet they're cool. Wise Man's Fear is the second book in the trilogy right, and the third book is on the way? Have you read the first book, The Name of the Wind?
The game is built for farming to be an option to players and there's a variety of places that are great to farm for some different items. The best places I found to farm for souls in the early game is in Darkroot Garden right though the Artorias Crest Door. There's a mage, cleric, bandit, and thief that respawn and you can kill them then go back to the nearby bonfire to respawn them. You can get around 7.000 souls each run and it doesn't take very long.
The best place to farm souls later in the game is in Anor Londo. It takes longer but you can get more souls per run. Start at the first bonfire in the area where the firekeeper is leaning up against the wall. Go out into the nearby courtyard and kill the giants on both sides. There's two rooms on either side of the courtyard with three giants each. I use a bow to snipe them from a distance, but it depends on your playstyle, you can kill them however you think is more efficient. Then go down the spiral elevator, past the walkway where the bell gargoyle was. Let me point point out that farming in Anor Londo is best done once you've completed the area. Make your way up to the main cathedral and take out the two giants guarding the entrance. You can shoot all the giants in Anor Londo in the calf/shin below the knee for maximum damage. Inside the cathedral proper there's two bigger stone giants, kill them both with shots to the lower leg and they give you even more souls than the other giants. If you've beat the bosses of Anor Londo you can pass right through the boss room, go up either of the two elevators flanking the room, and there's a bonfire up above. Rest at it and it respawns all the giants you just killed, from there you can make your way back to the original firekeeper bonfire, killing all the giants along the way for more souls.
To maximize the amount of souls you can get, it's great to have the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring that's found in Tomb of the Giants right past the second bonfire and down on a hidden ledge by a body near the archer. The ring increases souls absorbed by 20%. Another item to have is the Symbol of Avarice helmet which you acquire by killing all the mimic chests in the game, there's six in the whole game and you're guaranteed to get one by the last mimic you find and kill. It increases soul drop by another 20%. With those bonuses I always get around 17.600 souls per run, one way. There's a giant blacksmith nearby in Anor Londo so I always have to a place to buy arrows, and arrows are cheap. Spend a few thousand souls and you can max out your 999 arrow capacity. As you farm the giants in Anor Londo they can also occasionally drop titanite chunks and whatever weapons and shields they have.
There's one thing that can totally keep you from farming in Anor Londo and you can screw yourself. If you kill Gwynevere and Gwyndolin, the sun goes away and there's twilight over the city and all those giants and enemies you were farming are gone forever. Attacking Gwynevere and finding the boss battle with Gwyndolin is totally optional and you can go the whole rest of the game without choosing to do that, therefore making Anor Londo a perfect place to farm for as long as you like.
Darkroot Garden and Anor Londo are my favorite places to farm souls and level up.
Do you play those on an Xbox or do you play on your 360? I don't have my original Xbox anymore so I have to play on the 360, but it can get rough on the technical side. Both KotOR 1&2 are both backward compatible on 360 but they have some hiccups in the emulation or whatever.
That place is really tough to navigate, especially the narrow walkways with swinging blades along the way. I hate those lol. The only bonfire you come across is deep in the fortress too, so you have to fight a long ways till you get to the checkpoint. Have you come across the tar pit at the bottom of the castle where there's a bunch of demons waiting?
They've all been 800+ so far, Clash of Kings was 900+, but they're paced really well and the chapters aren't actually very long so it seems to kind of fly by lol. Are there some books you've been meaning to get to Joe? Do you have any preferences in genres?
Thanks guys! This is the first I've heard of that mod, it looks really cool. It has some of the ideas I was thinking of. They seem like they have a great attention to detail and the work they're doing on the gameplay is solid. I'd definitely like to play this mod.
