Caltrops - Demon's Souls - Re: All right setting this up wasn't bad

Forum Overview :: Demon's Souls

by Mysterio 12/06/2012, 10:16pm PST

Arbit wrote:

I just ended up installing the mouse and resolution fixes and didn't have to soil myself messing with router ports and IP port forwarding plasma conduits. Whew! Thanks for the links.

The game is amazing. Took me a while to get my feet under me, particularly with respect to bosses. Silly me, I thought trying to block a club the size of entire body would result in my body bloodily merging into the club. Not so! Can you trying to kill the bell gargoyles with firebombs, a halberd, and dodging? That shit took me hours. Literally... I think it took me hours. :(

Yes, a lot of that hinges on how effective you are at using the blacksmith before fighting them. The difference between going in there with +5 weapons and +3 armor and...not...is significant. That fight especially favors downward slashing/overhand weapons (2h hand axe, other 2h downward chops) because then the off angles on the rooftop work to your advantage instead of making you miss by slashing horizontally, which then gives you an easy diagonal movement to have the fire go over you.
By the way, regardless of what weapon you end up choosing, consider experimenting with switching between your shield being up, releasing the shield, and then tapping Y to go two handed before attacking. The bonus damage is derived from the amount of strength bonus that weapon gets, but the main advantage is the different, more aggressive moves and that it does greater poise damage (ie staggering the enemy).
With human size enemies, learning to backstab and, eventually, to parry, will save you a tremendous amount of time. It will also make you live longer, since the number one thing that gets you killed is taking a long time to fight someone, and critical hits do +100% and beyond damage.

Am I crazy or is the spear superior to pretty much everything? Long range, can attack while blocking, comparable damage to a sword, and perhaps most importantly doesn't constantly hit friggin walls. The main advantage of a sword - AOE sweepiness - is often a downside, because if you get close enough to hit multiple opponents and one guy blocks, you are wide open and in range to get smacked by the other guys. With a spear I can still hit multiple opponents by lining them up shishkebab style, or just play it safe and use my long range to poke people to death with impunity.

The spear is a fantastic weapon for PvP, especially when used in 2 weapon styles that let you trap the opponent between accurate long range hits and fast short range hits. Some variants of the spear, like the Moonlight Spear for magic users and the Dragonslayer spear for...dragonslayer builds (24 str and 24 dex is kind of an odd combo) is very effective.
But in PvE, it suffers from a number of limitations. As you start upgrading gear, you'll notice it generally does pretty average damage...but that's before you take into account how inefficient fighting from behind a shield is in terms of stamina. See, you use more to attack from behind the shield, and you regain stamina really slowly while the shield is up...it's a vicious cycle. In general, regardless of your weapon you want to keep the shield down (also means you strafe faster) until you see the attack start, so your stamina stays up. Anyway, the spear gets better if you're really good at the game and can take advantage of the "hit interrupt" criticals that piercing weapons get a slight bonus on, but not enough to make it worth it.
See, another thing that spears are terrible at is damaging poise. Poise is a hidden statistic, in that you have a number for it (as does every enemy in some form) but you never see a decreasing meter for it as you do with stamina. Basically, if you're naked or in light armor it's 0; medium armors will have slight amounts of it (in the character sheet you can see the amount) and heavy armors will have as much as 20-50+ per piece. In general the bigger the enemy, the harder they are to stagger, but some are surprisingly fragile (I stagger the hell out of gargoyles now that I know to go two handed with heavier weapons). The game is a lot easier if you have a weapon that can significantly damage poise, which typically means weapons that are heavier than 6 lbs (so beyond your medium swords and the like) and axes and hammers. On my SL1 playthrough, I've found out (from other people it never would have occurred to me) that the humble reinforced club does an unbelievable amount of staggering with 2h swings. In any case, this is huge because it buys you time to land that second swing that can end a fight before he even gets a chance to react, which makes you a lot safer.

Oh, the other thing: pay attention to the stability stat on your shield of choice, as that means how much of a hit it will soak and therefore how much of your stamina goes away when it gets smacked. If stability is too low, a strong enough hit will just go through it. Generally, getting a shield up into the 60s is a huge improvement, and by the time you get a shield that can do the 70s you'll feel like many enemies are bouncing right off you. Strength builds (the eagle shield you might find later is a version of this sort of shield that even weaker characters can use) get access to shields that go up to the 80s handily, and while they lose the ability to parry it's a totally different game when people just bounce off you.