Dark Souls: Low level (<60) Composite Bow + Avelynn co-op run. I run Composite on a quality build, Laggy does Avelynn. Cleared out the DLC except Kalameet, and Nito.
Composite bow is surprisingly effective. Like, it is a legitimate weapon choice with large arrows. I imagined that its effectiveness would fall off as we got past Anor Londo but no, it remains 2legit, dealing around ~300 damage at +15 on 27STR/30DEX. Granted, for bosses it is terrible (though less terrible than the Caestus) but that's what Laggy and his Avelynn is there for, and even then none of the bosses have been particularly difficult.
Most surprisingly, running through the game with a bow changes my opinion of the dungeons a lot. Like, Upper Blighttown was incredibly fun with a bow. Having range changed the dynamic of the level enough that it felt like playing an entirely new game. Some areas, unsurprisingly, still suck shit though. Namely, the first half of New Londo Ruins. In fact, after this run I'm inclined to think that New Londo Ruins is a less fun dungeon than Blighttown. Both are still awful though.
In other news jesusfuckingchrist Dark Souls 2 Remastered needs to come out already because we're playing a fucking bow run come on From gimmie my fix
Good luck if you actually plan on fighting Nito (I'm guessing you omitted him and Kalameet on purpose). He's by far the worst fight for bows-only simply because neither he nor his minions take any goddamn piercing damage. I caved and called in help for that fight simply because it was a logistical impossibility solo (my guest killed Nito before I was even able to shoot down the mob). Otherwise yeah, composite bow is shockingly effective. Four Kings were reasonably scary because, while I dealt decent damage per hit, I couldn't put the hits out fast enough to prevent the whole mob from spawning, but generally it worked out way better than I'd expected. All this reminds me that sniping does not exist in Bloodborne and lord do I miss that option sometimes.
Anyway, more Bloodborne, jerkface was overcome through the power of jolly cooperation. (I'm pretty sure Mister Potter did a good 75% of the work here, thanks Fenrir.) Multiplayer is really pretty borked in Bloodborne, though, which is sad. The one good point is that it's even easier to find specific other players than it was in Dark Souls 2 (and you don't have to pay for a ring this time). Otherwise, there's a lot negative in the way Bloodborne healing affects online play. Given the expense of healing items, the fact that summons get only half rewards from victory and have reduced HP in someone else's world, it's entirely possible that even on a win a summoned player will barely see any real profit. And if you or your host die (former only being more likely due to reduced HP) you've actually only lost resources. The upshot of this is that because nobody wants to spend non-renewable resources on a fight that has dubious odds of actually paying out (and might have a slim profit margin even if it did), it can actually be pretty hard finding anyone just casually running co-op for the fights where you'd actually most want help (and of course since there are no summon signs in Bloodborne you have no idea whether anyone's even around, all you can do is just sit and wait interminably; and if you don't get anyone and give up, well, that expendable item you burned on summoning still isn't coming back, which is less a logistical problem since insight is incredibly common and more just vaguely insulting). Like, personally, if I want a quick bundle of souls, I'll just go help someone beat up E.T. because he's stupidly easy and I can farm ore while waiting for summons; almost nothing else endgame is really worth the time from a cost/benefit perspective, and I wish I didn't have to look at things that way but Bloodborne resource management kind of mandates it. All of this really makes me miss the supreme user-friendliness of Dark Souls 2.
But enough about things that suck, I have a katana now. In its base form, it's just a regular katana, fast, reasonably damaging, but a painful reminder that I didn't invest enough in Endurance on this run. Ouch, but at least I can fix that part. Transformed, it's the Chaos Blade, except with blood instead of fire, seems faster too. And with the R2 I guess you stab yourself with it and make it, I dunno, double bloody or something so it does ridiculous damage at the cost of even more HP burn. Probably you can already guess I don't use that move much since I'm generally averse to high-risk/high-reward strategies, but it's functional enough a weapon even without that. Anyway, it's pretty neat, and stronger than what I was using, but it's no Blade of Mercy. God do I miss being able to stunlock everything in the upper cathedral ward to death before it could move (and the magic damage might not look like much on paper, but it's a huge help against physically resilient enemies).
Also, I sent everyone possible to the chapel this time (except for the mass murderer of course), and this makes deceptively suspicious chapel caretaker man really happy. It's almost cute, in sort of a creepy way. I wonder if he'll stay that chipper after everyone's dead or crazy.
