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[Lectorog]

The first Dark Souls does a good job of not having highly farmable enemies. If you don't move forward, your upgrades get so expensive that farming is dreadfully boring. The best farming I found was the two snakemen at the start of Sen's - high soul bump as soon as you got there. Quickly became less useful. The same goes for the silver knights from the second anor londo bonfire, but their usefulness depends more on your weapon and ability to circle/parry. Many high-reward enemies simply take too much time and danger to be worth farming, or aren't very close to a bonfire.

Demon's Souls is even harder to farm in, but everything is relatively more expensive in that game anyway, so it's probably not a great judging point.

This is to say, it's hard to design the level so that it's rewarding to go through but not easy to farm. They did a good job in Dark Souls, so I hope they don't fuck it up in Dark Souls 2. It's not something you often think about, but it can really kill a game.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I never farmed in Dark Souls. I was surprised to learn that people did, it sounds painfully boring.

[WillowLuman]

Farming Wyverns and Silver Knights - fun because challenge and great dodge/riposte practice
Farming pretty much anything else - gaaaaaaah how much longer will this take!?

[nenjin]

Other than the start when I was all omgwtfbbqdyin, I didn't really farm for souls. I kinda leveled off at 50 because of people's warnings about getting ganked by high level gankers. Most of my souls eventually come from farming enemies for drops. I can be pretty single-minded when it's for something I want, so I did a lot of farming on guys like the Titanite Demons in Sens(and by extension, Snakemen because that place is so bloody annoying.) I'd also run the circuit through the church, getting all the tougher knights, when I needed souls for something. I guess I also farmed quite a few rats so I could build up a stockpile of Humanity to use. Sometimes I just hung out in an area and killed guys for the practice.
 
I think DS did a good job, in that it's entirely up to you/your skill level if you want to farm or move ahead asap.

[Sindain]

The first Dark Souls does a good job of not having highly farmable enemies.

Skeleton babies were quite farmable. Good bit of souls and unlimited humanity, just a pain to get to. Also you could get absolutely retarded souls from dark forest pvp before they patched it. I had a few times were I was literally getting a few million souls for every kill.

Though the best way to farm souls imo (and certainly most entertaining) in DaS was Co-op, so I hope that will still be true in DaS 2.

[askovdk]

A bit of a necro, but
1: It shouldn't be a problem for a game where you are a zombie most of the time. 
2: The game is out!
3: I played it all of yesterday, and it is great. 

The usual sense of mystery is present, and it is still rewardingly tough.
It may be a bit 'easier' than DS1, but not because the enemies are weaker or less dangerous if you make mistakes, - but it feels like the battles are more 'fair'. E.g. there is (for now) often room and light enough, and you don't have to (for now) fight archers from a ladder while poisoned.

The greates surprise to me was the joy of coop multiplayer. I always play for myself, but thought I would lend a hand to whoever needed it after beating a boss.
So I put down a white mark, - and 10 second later I were helping some dudes and we won nicely. So feeling good and with a 'token of gratitude' (and a boss bucket of xp) I returned and put down the mark again, - and then I realised (the probably old news for experienced coop players) that my humanity, my estrus flask, and my spell count had been restored. 

So for the rest of the yesterday I hardly needed bonfires, - whenever I were down to about half my spell count I would put down the white mark, help beat a boss and be back with full strength but no respawned enemies. 

Some say that Dark Souls have the best PvP, but I will add that it also have the best coop (at least for me). This completely non-binding "helping a stranger" for a limited time works very, very well, and I have both learned and shared some good tricks.

In case you haven't found the white soap stone (I had to go to the internet  ), and would like guidance:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Behind the Forest of Giants, after the 'hag' peddler, after running up a large branch to get on a wall, after climbing down a long ladder, and just behind the 'balista trap', - there is a man sitting on a bench at a gate. If you talk to him, go through the gate and later talk to him (multiple times), then he will give you the white soap stone.

An in case you want to know where the %¤#%  blacksmith key is (I found it on my own):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The hag peddler behind the Forest of Giants sell it for 1000 souls'

(If the DS2 talk should happen on the general DS thread, then I apologize and hope nenjin will lock this.  )

[Ozyton]

I'm trying my best to avoid spoilers and such for this game, and even so I ended up watching someone derp through the first area and poke his head into one of the others. I'm liking what I see so far, but PC junkies such as myself have to wait until April 25th =p

I also poked into one of the wikis to see what the starting classes were like and whether or not the Zweihander was still in the game. I noticed that apparently every single level you gain you gain a bit of HP instead of it being linked to one specific skill, so having your Hp cut in half isn't quite as crippling as it first appeared to me since everybody looks like they're going to have a lot of HP anyways. There also appears to be covenants that will summon players to help deal with invasions, which is the kind of thing I was hoping for.

Speaking of skills, they have weight capacity and stamina split into two different skills now, so there isn't really a single 'best' skill that every character should just pump up to 40.

So, has anybody heard anything about how the online stability is? Have they improved it? I would assume so if Askovk got summoned so many times... I haven't been summoned a single time in DS1

I also heard somewhere that they removed the lighting engine for the console release and you don't actually need torches to go anywhere, if that's true that's kind've a shame.

[WillowLuman]

Gaining at least some HP at every level? Well, that allays my worst fears about the half health thing. Still will have to defer my purchase until the PC version, since my Xbox is at home and I'd only be able to play it maybe once every 3 weeks.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You gained HP every level in Dark Souls I too.

Anyway, this game is glorious beyond words.

[WillowLuman]

You gained HP every level in Dark Souls I too.

Nope. To increase HP, you had to put a point into Vitality. Unless you did this at every level, you would not gain HP every level.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You gained HP every level in Dark Souls I too.

Nope. To increase HP, you had to put a point into Vitality. Unless you did this at every level, you would not gain HP every level.

Yep. (See how annoying that is?) Your HP increased slightly every level regardless of if the level gained was Vitality.

[WillowLuman]

You gained HP every level in Dark Souls I too.

Nope. To increase HP, you had to put a point into Vitality. Unless you did this at every level, you would not gain HP every level.

Yep. (See how annoying that is?) Your HP increased slightly every level regardless of if the level gained was Vitality.

I just booted up DS1 (I'm not talking about DS2 here), hacked in 10 million souls, and can confirm that HP does not increase on leveling up without putting points into vitality. If HP had increased regardless on level up in DS1, it would not have been a new feature in DS2, and thus not worth mentioning. But it is a new feature, which is why OzyTheSage mentioned it.

EDIT: Perhaps you were thinking of defense, which does increase by 1 point in each category for every level, regardless of stats.

[nogoodnames]

The greates surprise to me was the joy of coop multiplayer. I always play for myself, but thought I would lend a hand to whoever needed it after beating a boss.
So I put down a white mark, - and 10 second later I were helping some dudes and we won nicely. So feeling good and with a 'token of gratitude' (and a boss bucket of xp) I returned and put down the mark again, - and then I realised (the probably old news for experienced coop players) that my humanity, my estrus flask, and my spell count had been restored. 

I haven't been able to place my sign down and I haven't seen any summon signs either. Do you need to be in a certain covenant or reach a certain place to use the soapstones? I have been invaded once, so I don't think it's a network problem. Maybe it's part of being in the victor's stone covenant?

I also heard somewhere that they removed the lighting engine for the console release and you don't actually need torches to go anywhere, if that's true that's kind've a shame

Seems so, unfortunately. I've been to the area where they demonstrated the torch mechanic in the prerelease footage and it was barely darker than average. Hopefully it'll be back in the PC release.

[bulborbish]

Ok, to clarify:
DS1 All defences went up while HP only was a specific stat. 
DS2 HP goes up with every stat (with the specialist stat, Vigour, granting amounts similar to the old Vitality Stat. Resistances and Defences are not localized to any stat, and increase depending on what stat you increase.

Also, major boss spoilers contained, since I want to talk about them.

Spoiler: Don't look if you don't want to have boss spoilers (click to show/hide)

Ok... so the Guardian of the Blue Cathedral (found off Heidi's Tower) is Orstein, except with Dark Magic instead of Lightning. I died to him a couple of times, but overall, much easier than DS1 Orstein.

And No-Mans Wharf's boss gimmick is pretty interesting. The Boss Really isn't difficult, but as time passes the water level in the Boss Room rises. I wasn't in the battle long enough to get much more but some slowdown, but I presume that eventually you could drown in the room.

Anyway, Sorcerer's faster cast speed is nice, makes some bosses much easier than they deserve to be.

[nogoodnames]

I think I just set new personal records for most deaths to a single boss and most deaths in a single area in a Souls game.

I've been going through the game as a member of the Company of Champions and it is definitely not for the faint of heart. My SL1 run in dark souls was a cakewalk in comparison. Probably not a good idea to be a member for a first playthrough, but now I'm determined to tough it out. This should serve as penance for going into dark souls prepared and not getting the full experience.