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I like the Wanderer.

Backstabbing is alright. I've had more success with just circling around my enemy when he attacks, rather than trying to roll behind. Parrying, I'm still way too hit and miss for it to be worth the risk.

Hmmm, sounds good. I'll have to look into that.

Okay, so:

Pyromancer starts with 12 Strength, 9 Dexterity, 11 Endurance, 12 Attunement and 10 Vitality. Starts with a flame and fireball (800 souls) at level 1.

Bandit begins with 14 Strength, 9 Dexterity, 14 Endurance, 8 Attunement and 12 Vitality, with no spells, at level 4. Starting weapon does 5 more damage than the Pyro one, but both are replaced by the morning star immediately available at the shrine.

Drake Sword requires 16 Strength and 10 Dex, and a bow requires 12 Dexterity.

So to get and use the sword, the Pyro is looking at 7 soul level increases. The Bandit is looking at 5. For the Pyromancer to reach this point, it will be 4293 souls. For the Bandit, it will be 3791.

But the Bandit will need to buy the fireball spell for 800 souls. And go without it for the first 3 bosses (where it would be really useful). So, really, it would cost me less to get the drake sword and pyromancy to start with a pyromancer, on top of probably making the game easier due to the access to a strong AoE spell.

Oh, and the bandit will need 2 attunement before he gets his first spell slot, so that's another 1600 souls right there. The pyromancer, on the other hand, starts with 2 spell slots. So he can just spend 800 souls for a second copy of the spell. The bandit would need to buy the second copy AND spend 2 more soul levels.

I think I'm going with Pyro, if not for the math then because it will give me AoE during the early stages of the game.

I was saying bandit because you can pretty much use the drake sword with very little point investment the moment you get it. Once you have the drake sword you don't really need anything else for a long time. Like spoon said, go with pyro if you think you need the spells early but personally I never felt I needed anything once I got the drake sword. There's only one boss before the drake and he was easy enough with the axe.

Another cool thing with the bandit is the spider shield you start with. It's a decent shield but the best feature is the built in poison resist. With a regular shield you'll get poisoned even if you block but not with the spider shield. Very useful when you start encountering rats, poisoned dogs and assassins in the second part of the undead burg and is a must have for blight town (though you can find one in there somewhere).

I use the grass shield for fights when dodging is better then blocking. Grab weapon with 2 hands with grass shield and you're golden.

The smith in the castle at Undead Parish sells regular Titanite for 800 souls/ea.

If you don't feel like going through the londo ruins to get the curse removed, there's a vendor that sells herbs for 6000 souls.

I'd like to point out, if you want to do magic, pyromancer is probably best.

It has the best str of casters(in case you want drake sword) and there is a smith in lando ruins just down the elevator from firelink shirin before you get to any ghosts, that sells a catalyst for sorcery spells (500) and both soul arrow (30 uses for 2500) and heavy soul arrow (5k for 12 use iirc).

I'd recommend pyromancy for everyone, as the spells scale mostly with your weapon level of you fire catalyst (which is able to be upgraded first after you rescue a guy in the depths and second in blight town from a witch - although the one you get from the witch has but better int scaling for your spells)


If you need some early souls, after you kick down the ladder to reach the checkpoint that you already have stopped at in the undead burg. Start there, climb the ladder, go on the bridge, walk just a bit out, then run back down the stairs and touch the checkpoint. The dragon will rape everything on the bridge, and you should collect 300 souls just as you get back to the checkpoint. Rinse, repeat

Later on, you have the forest ledge farming and the infinite thing.

Also - melee scaling in the game is way low. I do about the same damage at 50str/dex that I did at 20/16. The game has an emphasis on upgrading your weapons, so hoard those and save them for a weapon you really like the fighting style of (I recommend upgrading your favorite weapon to lightning damage, as the regular damage is insane, and very few enemies resist lightning. My friend Adrian says the lightning upgraded version of an early spear (winged spear) and a tower shield has served him incredibly well all game.


Edit: A few last notes for casters (since I play one) you are gonna wanna look around blight town hard for the tin banishment catalyst (it is a pole looking weapon). It has just a tiny bit less int scaling but has a really decent scaling attribute for melee attacks Your regular attack cast your spell, and your hard attack thrusts your spear. It felt great comboing a great soul arrow into a poke or two to save magic (and most things run at you anyways so it is good you have your shield up and poke from behind it). With it the red robes you get in the same chest are nice, but you can get a free set at ceaseless discharge that is much better(he will kill you if you pick them up, but you keep them). Unfortunately, I have not found a smith yet that can upgrade catalysts, and the damage on the poke is falling off slowly. I really hope I find a similar weapon soon, because having a decent weapon you can use to cast spells frees up slots to switch between magics more easily.

Edited, Oct 12th 2011 3:57am by Tarub

How to Co-Op with Friends, from r/darksouls:

P.S. My PSID is idiggory.

Lot sof people have been complaining about some framerate issues, and control lag, but I haven't really experienced anything significant. Maybe once a play session, I get a framerate lag issue, if there's a lot of **** going on, but nothing worth complaining about.

I get some screen tearing and slowdown if there's a moderate bit of action and I try to rotate the camera quickly. It's usually when I'm in mid-panicked retreat, and have no idea where to run.

It'll only be a mild irritant until it causes me a needless death in a really bad situation.

Of course all of this time spent trying to learn to parry/backstab means that I've leveled a lot. I can already use a bow/the drake sword and have invested in Vitality some just from the souls I got. XD