Is there a worse zone in SotFS than Iron Keep?
Playing through it for the first time right now and this shit is just pure tedium, having to draw them all out one by one, snipe the archers and pray to god I one-shot Smelter just so I don't have to deal with those clowns ever again
was it always this bad?
Yea it sucks.
Funny I was just playing through that area an hour back.
I had been thoroughly enjoying Dark Souls II till this point at which I thought 'so THIS is why people complain about dude fifty enemies lmao'
Why the fuck do those knights aggro from across the map? Why are there two archers on opposite ends of a narrow area ensuring if you go after one you'll get hit by the other? Why is it that one of them blocks the fog door and the other one has 4 knights instantly appear when you approach it?
Without summoning a phantom it's not even hard, just pure tedious and annoying
>oneshot smelter
nah no way unless your some autistic speedrunner
Nail on the head
It really feels like they were doing everything in their power to stop you from entering that fog gate. I can understand not wanting people to just make a bee line for it, but this is kinda silly.
guess I'll just have to kill them enough times till they stop spawning, oh well
horsefuck valley is worse
You could level up and overpower him, but that probably takes longer than just killing the mobs until they stop spawning
Iron Keep was barely changed lol, it's not even the worst area
Wait till you see the DLC bro
Only bullshit area in DLC is the optional area that were designed specifically with challenge and co-op in mind.
Heides tower. Now full of black knight equivalents and three on one fights
Still the best fight club arena.
To be fair, they did change two things about it
1) They hid a bunch of the Anonne Knights away so you can't see them, so if you try run through to Smelter you'll get ambushed and killed. Clearly trying to bait the player.
2) It's now much, much harder to run to Smelter without clearing the way.
Heides was one of the easier areas for me, you can pull all of the knights individually and some of the white ones don't even aggro. Easiest boss fight in the entire game as well
>walk through mining area
>enter a poision windmill
>take elevator up
>end up in lava fortress
What?
git gud you noob
I see this complaint all the time, and I had it too.
Do you think the elevator was meant to go down, but they fucked it up?
Possibly. But there's also the thing with the windmill. How does it produce the poison? Or alternatively, where is it "pumping" it from? Why does burning it (but not stopping it) remove the poison? It just doesn't make any sense.
This has nothing to do with difficulty, rather poor design
It's pretty annoying. I think they made it that way on purpose so if you kept failing, you would get their armor with high fire resist for the Smelter fight. It feels like the devs kind of knew that area wasn't designed well.
This shithole is why when some shill on Sup Forums pulls the 'SotFS fixed everything wrong with DaS2!' card you know immediately they're talking bullshit.
The shit part is you can't even run past them because there's so many, the tracking is so utterly retarded and in DaS2 you don't get immunity while going through a fog door.
>sit at bonfire
>stand up
>make weeaboo pinjata
>sit back down
>repeat until area is devoid of life
That was a really easy way to get a lot of souls.
It burns the flaps so the wind can't catch it, still fucking stupid though.
The hell are you smoking, it's the goddamn WORST arena.
Eye-destroying colors, narrow bridge, door that invaders can't open resulting in inescapable ganks. Everything about that place fucking sucked and i'm glad that DS3 arena is a comfy winter garden.
No way, it's completely infeasible that such a mistake could be made. You don't accidentally make a whole element like that in the wrong direction, you'd notice it was wrong before you were finished and correct it.
They just wanted the feeling of exploring an entire continent, but decided to have a connected world as well, so the intended feeling was poorly communicated and made no sense.
That area was pretty awful, but's it's not the most tedious area I had to go through.
Maybe the ancient dragon area for laziest design? I know they made it better and the gold knights bowing to you was neat, but holy shit fuck those infinite stamina huge knights, and the dragons terrible too
I was thinking of getting around to this series. I have demonzu souru but I'd have to dig out the ps3 for it. Is min/maxing needed or is it fine to just play by ear?
It's pretty easy to just ignore them and do what you need to do.
Just take it as it comes, the games aren't that hard. Sure you'll probably die a bunch as you get used to it, but after that you'll breeze through the series.
Try not to look stuff up, most agree it's best to go in not knowing anything about it first time
Playing blind and looking up stuff that confuses you is the best way to go about it. That is assuming someone tells you the basics, like not to put points into Resistance in DS1.
This pretty much, just choose a weapon you like and make it work
DeS is the easiest in the series, so long as you don't accidentally fuck things up thanks to mechanics that aren't explained by the game.
1-4 runs on pure black are absolute hell
Pre-patch Shrine of Amana was worse if you were a melee character.
There's so much in this game that can be trivialized by using a bow.
Was it different in vanilla DaS 2?
Actually, all I hear is 'yeah SotFS fixed things' and 'different enemy placements' but what specifically DID SotFS do?
One big example for me is all those Pursuers in Lost Bastille. Anything else like that?
>all those Pursuers in Lost Bastille
What about them? I only played Scholar and those guys really spiced up the place.
They weren't there at all in vanilla. The only Pursuer in the game is the optional boss fight in the first level.
>The only Pursuer in the game is the optional boss fight in the first level.
Plus, you know, all the other ones.
SotFS might've added more, but there was always more than one, user
SOTFS made torches slightly more useful in an area or two I think and that pursuer thing. Other than that, they made every room you walk into an ambush. Or the original might have been like that too already, I cant remember.
Iron Keep was a lot better pre-SotFS. The Alonne Knights were stationary, and could easily be dealt with 1-2 at a time. The captains were still irritating, but there weren't 4-7 knights that would come sprinting from every corner of the room before, so you could deal with them.
They also fucked up Smelter Demon's AI in SotFS. He used to have clear patterns and ways of attacking that allowed you to call his bullshit, but somehow he gained the "Blue" Smelter Demon's AI, who fights very differently, causing him to just swing at seemingly random times with bizarre combos.
>What about them? I only played Scholar and those guys really spiced up the place.
In original DS2 there was only a single Pursuer in the game.
DESU SotFS didn't exactly change things much. It added Heide Knights to the Heide's Tower of Flame area, increased the number of Hammer Old Knights, etc.
Huntsman's Copse had few changes, and the changes that did happen were basically just moving an enemy to a different ambush spot, or simply shoving more enemies in a smaller space for no discernible reason.
Actually, in general SotFS just moved enemies so that they'd ambush you more. The Shadows in the cove, the mannequins in Earthen Peak, Alonne Knights sprinting out of every crevice in Iron Keep, etc.
>this shit is just pure tedium
That's DaS2 for you.
Z-Team fell for Namco marketing and designed everything around it.
>In original DS2 there was only a single Pursuer in the game.
There were two actually, and NG+ added two more
>added Heide Knights to the Heide's Tower of Flame area
So in the original there were no Heide Knights in the area that was named after them?
Yeah, they were just randomly scattered about the game. There was one in the Forest of Giants, one in Lost Bastille, and a few others scattered about, but I don't think there were any at Heide's Tower.
Why do you people even play this game if you hate tedious, unfun, garbage?
If you min/max in Demon's Souls then you'll make it so easy a Fable 3 playtester could beat it.
Wrong dipshit. It was a great arena. Maybe you couldn't hang with the real fighters because of your scrawny little gamer arms.
I guess the area would be bad if the Alonne Knights were actually challenging to fight in any way
Because it was the only striking instance of it in the game so far, and even then you can summon phantoms in co-op (other players or game NPCs) to aid you.
A single flaw does not break a game. Even if Dark Souls II is the worse than others in its series it's still a great game with loads of variety, great online integration, fun bosses, and loads of content. It's still better than 95% high profile games that came out in the last ten years and I haven't even beaten it yet.
I feel the same. I enjoyed playing it. I liked the variety of PVP. I liked the Agape ring, no bonfire runs and the ability to build a viable hex and mage in addition to strength and dex.
The fuckers are just asking to get backstabbed
Iron Keep is a co-op area.
Or stunlocked into submission, before they can even start their weeb kendou bullshit.
never had any problem with Iron Keep
>abloo bloo I have to use strategy and can't charge head on like a retard
eh, it's fine
the "co-op areas" in the DLC are much worse
ITT people who need to git gud. Smelter demon is entirely optional so just do it when youre stronger if the knights are too tough.
Just did a str build run, I was surprised how trivialized everything was when you're spamming ultra greatsword attacks.
>1 shot alone knights
>2 shot captains
>Stun lock lightning reindeer fuckers in frozen wastes with stone ring
>1 shot riposted invading npcs
You either played vanilla or just summoned someone from the get go.
There is no strategy in getting ganked by literally 7 knights. All you can attempt are cheese tactics; even attempting to run past won't work like it does in other clusterfuck areas like Black Gulch
Demons souls is the least linear of the souls series but it also the easiest to break if you know what youre doing.
What is the most fun:
>Halberd
>Greatsword
respectively?
For PvE.
>There is no strategy in getting ganked by literally 7 knights
You really have to act like a retard to pull them all at once,and I played both release and SotFS.
>7 knights
Wow youre a moron if you didnt realise the gimmick of that place. Get good you retard.
>You really have to act like a retard to pull them all at once,and I played both release and SotFS.
This is a straight up lie. As soon as you step out of the archway into the sunny area knights come running from across the bridge, while the archer keeps shooting at you.
Literally everyone who's played the game can attest to that.
>There is no strategy in getting ganked by literally 7 knights.
The strategy is not charging in headlong and aggroing all of them at once
did iron keep change a lot in scholar? it was one of the better areas in vanilla das2, in my opinion
If you'd remember the part in question or actually played SotFs, you'd know that it's impossible NOT to collectively aggro all of them at the same time as soon as you're in the area.
running through iron keep is pretty easy as long as your goal is to skip Smelter and go straight to the 3rd iron keep bonefire
>sprint past first knight
>juke the knight on the stairs
>run past the knight outside
>jump down to the first bridge lever
>juke knights coming down the stairs, run across bridge and jump over to the wheel (this part it's easy to get knocked into the lava by a random attack)
>spin the wheel
>hop down on the right
>open door
>up the ladder
>run past guy
>up ladder
at this point you can start playing normally because the level isn't crap from this point on
>As soon as you step out of the archway into the sunny area knights come running from across the bridge, while the archer keeps shooting at you.
No they fucking don't. A couple of guys will come from the left side, the ones across the bridge will not aggro until you're actually on the bridge.
SotFS changed a few things, mainly reducing enemy numbers.
FotFG first area has more enemies, but you can fight them one at a time.
Bastille removed a bunch of enemies before the Pursuer.
Earthen Peak shuffled the manikins around so they are more visible instead of coming offscreen.
Shaded Woods took out all enemies and replaced them with a few ghosts.
Drangleic Castle removed all the Alonne Knights and Elephant Knights and replaced them with a Chariot.
etc.
>Kill Knight on bridge
>Move forward
>Draw out Knight on stairs to the bridge and kill
>Move forward
>Knight shooting at you from window has most likely come down to kill you
>Kill and go left
>Kill Knight on these set of stairs
>Go through hidden passage way
>Kill this Knight
>Another Knight comes running for you
>Kill
>Move forward slowly
>Never aggro more than two sword Knights
It's really not that bad
The ones across the bridge won't aggro until you're on the bridge. You can even see them coming down if you stand on the bridge and watch them drop down from the ledge.
I can attest to that.
you can literally slip smelter. explore until you find a ladder. from there i dont know of you can access the bonfire. as for fighting smelter, high AR per hit is the trick
>As soon as you step out of the archway into the sunny area knights come running from across the bridge, while the archer keeps shooting at you.
Two of them. Anyone who can count can attest to that.
Why is Sup Forums so casual?
DkS2 hate stems entirely from people being bad at video games.
>DkS2 hate stems entirely from people being bad at video games.
And the continuity of the world being kinda fucked up. And ADP. Rest is fun though.
I think by that time I had a ton of castings and could one-shot all the knights, and Lucatiel tanks the Smelter Demon like a champ, so I never really had that much of an issue with it.
I don't think I ever played DaS2 with a primarily melee-based build, though, so maybe that's the issue.
>aving to draw them all out one by one, snipe the archers and pray to god I one-shot...
you'll have to be more specific, OP -- that could be any Souls game every made and any of its encounters, from grunts to bosses
Having never had a bow at that point im not sure what he needs to snipe in that part.
>How does it produce the poison? Or alternatively, where is it "pumping" it from?
It's pumping the poison up from underground. Didn't you notice the pits outside were all full of poison gas? When you destroy the windmill, there's nothing running the pumps any more and the shit drains off. It makes perfect sense.
no the game designer said it was meant to be an elevator to "above cloud" level. he said they should have made it clearer but oh well..
Do people actually do this? Clear entire areas to get another shot at the boss, even after you already know the area? I kill them methodically when I explore and progress, but Im not going to do that when its my third attempt on the boss
I never thought about it that way. I always thought they were mining titanite or something like that, not poison gas/sludge.
>Or alternatively, where is it "pumping" it from
The ground?
That sounds like one contrived bullshit exuse.
>Do people actually do this? Clear entire areas
Yeah. Old Knight genocide was worth every second. They sure as hell aren't respawning on my watch.
Its in a volcano
OP here, mainly talking about the area right before the smelter fog gate
you drop down the bridge, the fog gate to your left is blocked by an archer, there's an archer to your right and a knight drops down on your head the minute you move an inch to either direction
the area is a pain to clear is what I was trying to get at, the knights themselves don't pose a challenge, it's just that you need to lure them out one by one, ideally killing the archers beforehand and just inching your way forward since they aggro from a mile away
I actually did clear all the Iron keep knights because I wanted the katana, but in general I just rush through areas if Im trying to down the boss.
You do know you can use a bow to draw the knights who drop down to you, right?
I mean I'll admit that the area is tedious, but if you can't into simple threat management I don't know why you play Souls.
The alonne knights placement drives me fucking nuts. They show up out of nowhere. Smelter wasn't that bad though. Just had to switch up my weapon choice since i was using the fire longsword.
>was it always this bad?
I think they added more enemies into the SoTFS version of Iron Keep or at least changed the enemy placement so that the enemies are in groups instead of alone/on their own.
I have no idea why they made this change and it only adds more tedium to traversing the area which already was absolute shit in the vanilla version.
>because I wanted the katana
I had like three of them lying around after the weebknight genocide. Farming just isnt as a good a motivation for me as contempt for my enemies.
So the entire area with Huntsmans Copse and a FUCKING MINE are inside a volcano? And the elevator aswell as the giant doom fortress it leads to are invisible from the outside of the windmill?
Oh yeah it is a pain to clear that i can agree with. Though i dont really mind that since it gives me more incentive to not die in that part or to the boss. Its its one of the tougher bosses too so i usually do him last.
>You do know you can use a bow to draw the knights who drop down to you, right?
I know, read the post I was replying to.
I'm not sure it's physically possible to run to Smelter without killing anything in Scholar. It was easy as shit in the original version, but the new archer placement coupled with having far more knights hounding your ass the entire way to the fog door is crazy. You could probably kill them to extinction long before you figure out the tool-assisted timing needed to enter the fog door without getting gang-raped. It's also not hard to kill them at all, there's just like 12 of them in one room.
Personally I think they just realized that the area is pathetically small for even an optional boss, and their solution to that is to add more enemies.
Well, it probably didn't start off as sludge. It was probably being used to pump water up to the Iron Keep initially, then when they discovered Titanite down there they dug into a pocket of something toxic and it made the ground go bad. Shit like that happens all the time in mining operations.
But I guess by that point they already had the crazy lady running things and she was all, "I'm going to roll around in this shit and become beautiful!"
But she turned into a snake instead.
>I'm going to roll around in this shit and become beautiful!
What a flawless plan m'lady.
so the consens is that the updated DS2 made the game worse?
Vanilla version had
1 on the bridge
2 in the room through the door
1 up some stairs to the right of the door
2 knights and a captain in the next room
1 knight which aggros shortly after the archway
1 captain above the archway, 1 on the bit to the far left of the room and 1 in front of the smelter boss fog
1 knight under the stairs leading to the fire room
2 knights in the fire room
1 knight on the bridge
1 knight after the bridge
a knight underneath the captains by the archway and to the far right
Changes in SotFS
Everything has a MUCH higher aggro range
a third knight in the second room
a second knight past the archway
2 knights that drop down after you drop off the bridge by the captain at the fog door
another captain that shoots at you after you drop down the bridge
2 knights that drop down when you get in melee range of the new captain
I think I might have missed one but there's about ten more enemies in the area, which is pretty crazy since there was only a little more than ten originally. It seems like they've made optional bosses harder to reach, since chariot rider is now fucking horrible to reach since all 6 minibosses aggro at the same time, and there's two new enemies
>So the entire area with Huntsmans Copse and a FUCKING MINE are inside a volcano?
No, you dork. At the base of the volcano. They built the Iron Keep at the peak of it, but it was so heavy that it sank through the cap.
Volcanoes are actually pretty rich in metals and gems because they dredge shit up from deeper in the earth. They also tend to be full of toxic gasses and shit, which would explain all the poison in the mill.
The lack of a volcano in the skybox is probably just an oversight.
Only if you are bad at the game and really stupid.
>The lack of a volcano in the skybox
That would probably have fixed it quite handily.