Losing progress in this game feels incredibly frustrating, as the game is very slow paced and you're not going to change your strategies that much. I'm saying this as the guy who tried going through Dark Souls 2 without dying 50 times.
Speaking of? I'm making a note here, huge success.
I thought I was out. I thought was
done. But one more crazy character build idea got hold of me:
Ignus wishes to burn. From nerfed the other casting classes pretty badly, but I thought pyromancy was mostly spared, right? I figured I'd find out how good it was on its own, so here is plan: run as sorcerer through No-Man's Wharf (for the pyro hand) and Harvest Valley (for the Fragrant Branch of Yore; this honestly seemed more accessible to me than jumping down the pit); as soon as both the pyro hand is acquired and Rosabeth is free to provide the first stock of spells, nothing but pyromancy may be used for the rest of the game; hitting dudes with the pyro hand is fine in order to conserve spells (this actually matters earlyish when you have few pyromancies and can save a spell by just punching someone who barely survived a fireball or whatever); initially I intended to go full hollow, toss on Ring of Binding to mitigate HP reduction, and rock the dark pyromancy flame. That last component fell by the wayside since by the time I reached the thing I still hadn't died. I wasn't about to ruin a good streak by jumping off a cliff just to use a gimmick item! So I stuck with the regular flame the whole time, would have liked to go full Jester Thomas and dual wield them but unfortunately the dark flame has strikingly negative scaling when you're human. (And you can't get a second regular flame, I realized with some chagrin after wasting the time and effort of running No-Man's Wharf ascetic'd.)
Pyromancy is actually pretty crazy good! You're just so limited in spells early on that you have to chunk through a few early zones to get going, which is pretty lame. Stats matter a lot more for pyro damage than I thought. I think before I made the mistake of testing the wrong enemies--those dudes who run around in the river by the first forest bonfire? Probably I didn't realize at the time that being soaked vastly increases fire resist in DS2. Actually, with optimal stats you're probably getting a couple hundred extra damage out per spell. Stat spread was as follows: 60 ATT (I want
all those spells! I even ascetic'd Shaded Woods to kill NG+ Najka for her ring), 30 VIG/END (HP is nice, and Combustion spells eat a lot of stamina), 30 INT/FTH (practically speaking, pyro damage caps out at INT + FTH = 60). Everything else stayed at the sorcerer base (it had the highest starting concentration of mental stats), which meant I could never use any weapon but the dagger (which is fine, because the plan ultimately was no weapons). Knew I wouldn't be able to use a bow, ever, figured what the hell, I've done the game without range before, at least I can chuck 'nades this time. That's gotta be easier, right? No adaptability, all my agility had to come from attunement. And vitality is just pointless! Specialization is always key in these games, I've found (at least until From patches your character into obsolescence, hi there clerics/hexers).
A bunch of optional stuff I skipped because dude I'm halfway through the game and I still haven't died, no unnecessary risks. Chariot stands out as a gigantic fucking unnecessary risk even though he's guarding a stack of pyromancies; I waited to come back and kill him in the most humiliating way possible after completing the game (we'll come back to this). Ditto Royal Rat Authority, the spell you get from him is just worthless. Did kill Royal Rat Vanguard as early as it seemed safe to do so (Flame Swathe 2HKO'd him) because oh my god you guys I need Toxic Mist.
Worst parts: Iron Keep, predictably, because everything has massive fire resist and I still can't fucking dodge Alonne knights worth a damn. The bosses are poison bait but Old Iron King has trucks full of HP and outlasts all my poison spells. This is terrifying because he takes like 20% damage from fire and the risk of falling into the lava dwarfs the potential to die from direct damage in that fight (he hits hard, but there's so much wind-up on his attacks, you always have a chance to heal). Probably even worse? Shrine of Amana, because
I have no fucking bow in the Shrine of Amana. Also everything has enhanced fire resist from the water and the lizard dudes genuinely can't be hit with fireballs when they're fully submerged. Since I still hadn't died and in effect this had morphed from a themed run into a no-death run, I decided to break conditions and at least shoot poison arrows even though I wouldn't be able to do any real direct damage with them. It turns out that without meeting the stat requirements of your bow you can't benefit from the poison arrow effect either...at least until you've fired like twenty of them into the same target, as I learn in the room immediately preceding Demon of Song (the absolute worst room in the game to do without a bow, probably responsible for a full 50% of deaths in Pugilism Souls run, and the only place where I was desperate enough here to actually try killing an enemy with 18 damage arrows at a time). Excepting those areas, it was a remarkably effective build! And no, I'm not too proud to summon both NPC phantoms for the throne duo fight. Fuck those guys.
So yeah, completing Dark Souls 2 without dying, a thing I did this week.
Anyway, having finished all mandatory content and acquired my totally useless invisible hand ring as a reward, there were three things that still needed to be done:
1) Kill chariot in the most humiliating way possible.
I'm sure as hell not fighting him legit ever again, but shooting arrows takes too long in a normal game and would take years in this one. Tools at hand! I always wondered, what would happen if you reduced his healthbar to zero while the chariot was still running? Poison doesn't deal enough damage to whittle him down all the way, it'll always run out before he crashes. So instead: wear him down halfway through Firestorm, then
fill the corridor with Lingering Flames. Lingering Flame is amazing (amaaazing) and I'd never used it before. Floats in the air until an enemy approaches, then explodes for 600-800 damage each (and a ghastly degree of console slowdown if you use multiples at once). I can toss four of them down in between chariot passes (very long casting time). There's no way he's living through all that! ...Except he does because he's apparently programmed to go HP->1 on a killing blow, so I still had to run all the way down and poke him in the face like usual. Dammit!
2) Troll other players with invisible pyro hand.
This is honestly unfair. I brought the starting dagger back out of storage to sit in the right hand for misdirection. Poke ineffectually at people, act like I'm going for backstabs. And then 3x Forbidden Sun to the face when there's no cause to expect I'm actually a caster. Forbidden Sun got nerfed but that's still reliably 2,000+ damage in like five seconds and practically speaking you just don't get more than 2,000 HP in DS2. So yeah, 100% invasion success rate (excepting the dude who exited the zone before I could find him, which apparently is a thing you can do in this game).
3) DLC.
...And here we go back to being staggeringly incompetent because now From's all no guys you can't be a caster, don't you understand that's not our idiom?! At best 60% damage vs regular goons (who all have bloated HP counts), maybe 30% in Crown of the Old Iron King because Brume Tower is the fetid womb that spawned Smelty. Great Combustion's fantastic in the regular game, ranges anywhere from 600-1,000 damage depending on the enemy; in DLC zones you're lucky if you get 300 out of it. I just don't understand why they thought it was necessary to make the most fun areas in the game torture for specific builds. Fume Knight (Crown of the Old Iron King's boss) is by far the worst ordeal, he probably has 90% fire resist. Had to be a solid fifteen minutes I spend dodging, chucking fireballs, and chewing amber herbs to replenish spell charges in the one attempt it took to beat him. At least most of the other bosses I could take with just the stock of spells I walked through the door with! So yeah, fighting Raime with just fire damage, not a challenge recommend for those valuing their sanity.
I did die a couple times in the DLC (precisely twice, one an incredibly stupid falling death and once because Burnt Ivory King is a jerkass who mocks fire damage and makes you fight through a horde of goons that mock fire damage just to reach him). And I skipped the optional zones in the latter two DLC campaigns altogether because they're frankly just anti-fun even with a competent melee fighter. But the game doesn't care about that because it happened after I beat the final boss, so I don't care either.
Anyway, show's over here. Even if another ridiculous character idea seized me, I can't see any point in playing this again.
~
Also speaking of restarting PCRPGs--
Wasteland 2: I wasn't in a fantasy mood this evening, perhaps for obvious reasons, so I gave this a couple hours' test drive after dinner. I feel like I must be doing lots of things wrong. I'm mucking around in the basement of
Vault 22 Ag Center in the first substantial quest/dungeon I've encountered so far, and I have no immediate idea how much of the place is left but I already look likely to run out of bullets and healing supplies before finishing. My team fails at hitting people, I'm about out of ammo and every box and door I open explodes on me and no one in the party can detect the traps. I just don't know. I guess I should've specialized more, then maybe hitrates would be composed marginally less of ass? I tried to give everybody skills in a couple different weapon types figuring the extra options would offset limited availability of ammunition, but maybe that just bit me in the ass through people wasting bullets instead. Doesn't help that I went low strength on everyone but the melee specialist and I belatedly notice that strength determines HP in this game.
This is the PC gang I built:
-Mizuki Maki: the party Face. Supposed to take the charm/outwit options in conversation while the rest of the party carries combat, but this has hardly mattered so far. Point or two in handguns because it seemed the simplest option for the least combat-focused PC. Also dumped points in leadership because the bonuses sounded nice (this is probably the most useful thing she has, actually, full-party accuracy boost and all).
-Gordon's Alive?!: hits people with clubs and talks to animals. Basically Sulik without the bone through his nose. Charming animals is neat since it basically removes an enemy from the fight altogether, except you don't get XP for this and that's a problem since full heal on leveling up is a godsend and something that actually looks vital if the game is going to have a lot of lengthy dungeons like this.
-Abigail Micah: doctor, took both first aid and surgery. SMGs were supposed to be backup but actually they were totally boss...until she ran out of ammo. Now she's doing piddly damage burning through the few energy cells I have on a crappy starting phaser.
-Ghost: team sniper, fucking scary, woo. That part works. Backup skills in assault rifles (less impressive), weaponsmithing and security of minimal import thus far. Lockpicking got me some extra loot, yay? But the doors and boxes always explode on me anyways so whatever healing supplies I find in the process are basically null gain.
The game looks neat and all, but I feel like I'm going to be in a resource exhaustion scenario within an hour if I keep playing.
