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[Baneling]

Protip: Figure out which one you hate to deal with most. Kill that one first.

Oddly for a lot of people it's easiest to kill Ornstein first. I don't get it - personally I find the hugemassive hammer to be harder to dodge than the spear.

Also, each one takes basically no damage from one element. For Ornstein, it's lightning - for Smough, apparently it's fire. Bring two weapons, or one that isn't either of these.

Smough is weak to bleed, AFAIK.

It's always possible to poison/toxic them to death, though difficult.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Protip: Figure out which one you hate to deal with most. Kill that one first.

Oddly for a lot of people it's easiest to kill Ornstein first. I don't get it - personally I find the hugemassive hammer to be harder to dodge than the spear.

Also, each one takes basically no damage from one element. For Ornstein, it's lightning - for Smough, apparently it's fire. Bring two weapons, or one that isn't either of these.

Smough is weak to bleed, AFAIK.

It's always possible to poison/toxic them to death, though difficult.

I don't think fire/lightning resistances apply much on first playthrough. I literally killed Smough with combustion (fire) and Ornstein with Demon Spear (lightning).

That said, poison/toxin strategy is WIN! Poisoned daggers and toxic mist. Green herbs and dodging all day long.

[Sordid]

Oddly for a lot of people it's easiest to kill Ornstein first. I don't get it - personally I find the hugemassive hammer to be harder to dodge than the spear.

It's because Lightning!Smough is just a stronger version of himself, Giant!Ornstein has a different moveset and requires a different strategy than his smaller self.

[Lectorog]

I know you can get giant Ornstein to jump out of the window. XD
(closest video I could find)

[ShoesandHats]

Well, nevermind. I beat em' with a couple of phantoms. On to whatever is next!

[Lectorog]

Well, nevermind. I beat em' with a couple of phantoms. On to whatever is next!

It's death. Death comes next. Always.
Really, though, the game opens up. (Though, technically, only 1 area and 1 boss open. The rest were already accessible before placing the lordvessel.)

[ShoesandHats]

Okay, well, on another note: I just found a hell of a way to farm humanity, even if it was unintentional. Put on the Covetous Serpent Ring you find in Sen's Fortress and head into the depths. There'll be a hell of a lot of rats as well as a bonfire there. Go nuts.

[Lectorog]

Yup. Put down a summon sign to occasionally get a boost of souls, too. It's been discussed in this thread. Just a few pages back, IIRC.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Other places to farm humanity

Better

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the Tomb of Giants, right before the final boss, there is an area that will endlessly spawn skeletal babies. Those have a "high" chance to drop humanity, but you have to grab it quickly as it dissapears. Also provides you with a metric tonne of souls. Come prepared to farm, and don't be human if the boss is alive. Drop summon sign near boss for bonus points, just be sure to bring a holy weapon.

If you are like me, and have faith of 8, the Silver Knight Spear deals holy damage and scales with strength/dex!

Best

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the additional content, Artorias of the Abyss, you travel to the ancient Oolacile. At the bottom of that, there is an area that spawns humanity phantoms. As one would expect, they drop a LOT of humanity - but, I'm afraid not many souls.

If you go there, and don't want to PvP, be aware that Oolacile Township is a PvP area with no invasion cooldown. Come hollow.
The area leading up to it has mobs that are somewhat difficult, and are resistant to everything that's NOT strike damage. Bring a mace/hammer/fist weapon if possible.

[Lectorog]

Both of those areas scare me, and aren't easy to get to. Farming rats is very safe. Those areas do net more humanity in the same time, all the same.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Both of those areas scare me, and aren't easy to get to.

It's death. Death comes next. Always.

I hear you

[CognitiveDissonance]

On a different topic, is anyone reading this great at theorycrafting in this game? (or can you suggest a relevant forum?)

I discovered I love spears/polearms, and embarked on a quest to have ALL THE SPEARS AND POLEARMS. Here is what I found

Spoiler: Weapon List and how they work for me (click to show/hide)

- Demon Spear +5 is absolutely amazing in middle game, and throughout most of PvP. Seriously. This thing rocks everything.

- Silver Knight Spear +5 is almost as good, especially for regular PvE. A few enemies resist it, but most take a LOT of damage

- Dragonslayer Spear +5 is terrible. Mind you, I have 8 faith so the lightning damage doesn't scale, but this weapon is completely outdone by Demon Spear. Slower attacks, less range, heavier... do not want. I know it has scaling Lightning damage, but that's for a faith build. Feels like a general failure.

- Fire Lucerne +10 rocked my world when I got it. It just outdid everything the spears could do by a huge margin.

- Occult Pike +5 does nothing, but I assume it's because of my low faith. I hoped that the Occult bonus would make up for the lack of scaling, but this is the lowest damaging weapon out of everything listed.

- Scythe +15 (not Great Scythe) has by far the highest damage potential. I recently got my hands on a Silver Tracer +5 (160 crit) and this Scythe still crits harder.

- Chaos Winged Spear +5 is crap. It's not even close in damage to others, and that's with my permanent 10 humanity.

Now what the hell? Why is the Chaos spear so pathetic? Chaos is supposed to be amazing, I don't understand... The +15 Scythe does more damage than anything else, and the Silver Knight Spear is the best spear I have found. What am I missing?

I'm currently working to get a +15 Partizan/Pike and a +5 lightning spear (Thank you, Sen's Fortress) but I don't have very high hopes for them.

So help me figure this out, why is the +15 Scythe so much better than a +10 Fire Lucerne, and why is the Silver Knight Spear better than all other spears? I thought elemental weapons were the thing...

---

As an aside, with the right collection of shields and a Demon Spear, invaders have no clue what to do. They keep trying to parry my spear at full range... yeah, that's not even possible you silly player.

[nogoodnames]

Elemental weapons do not have any scaling, which means they do the same amount of damage no matter what your stats are as long as you meet the requirements to use the weapon. This makes them excellent at low levels but they become inferior to normal +15 weapons if you invest stats into strength and dexterity.

Furthermore, elemental weapons suffer from split damage. In essence, the resistance of your enemy gets applied twice, once for each type of damage. So, for example, if a fire weapon does 200 AR of fire damage and 200 AR physical damage for a total of 400 AR while a normal weapon does 300 AR of pure physical damage and the enemy you are facing has enough fire and physical resistance to reduce each type of damage by 100 AR (This isn't quite how the armour system actually works, but it's close enough for this example) the weapons will end up doing the same damage because (200-100)+(200-100) = 200 and 300-100=200.
I've also heard that weapon damage increases non-linearly with AR, so a pure physical 400 AR weapon will do more than twice as much as a 200 AR weapon.

So, as a general guideline you should only use elemental weapons if you plan on keeping your stats low, otherwise use +15 physical weapons.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Elemental weapons do not have any scaling, which means they do the same amount of damage no matter what your stats are as long as you meet the requirements to use the weapon. This makes them excellent at low levels but they become inferior to normal +15 weapons if you invest stats into strength and dexterity.

Furthermore, elemental weapons suffer from split damage. In essence, the resistance of your enemy gets applied twice, once for each type of damage. So, for example, if a fire weapon does 200 AR of fire damage and 200 AR physical damage for a total of 400 AR while a normal weapon does 300 AR of pure physical damage and the enemy you are facing has enough fire and physical resistance to reduce each type of damage by 100 AR (This isn't quite how the armour system actually works, but it's close enough for this example) the weapons will end up doing the same damage because (200-100)+(200-100) = 200 and 300-100=200.
I've also heard that weapon damage increases non-linearly with AR, so a pure physical 400 AR weapon will do more than twice as much as a 200 AR weapon.

So, as a general guideline you should only use elemental weapons if you plan on keeping your stats low, otherwise use +15 physical weapons.

Yeah... but I didn't expect elemental weapons to suck  :-/

oh well, +15 partisan it is!

[Baneling]

Also, BTW, there is no such thing as a weapon that cannot be parried.

Everything from a humanoid enemy can be "parried"(Exceptions are things like Ceaseless Discharge or O&S).

EVERYTHING. Even arrows can be partially parried.

A partial parry is using a parry to "block" something that can't normally be parried - instead of stunning, it just decreases damage from a hit  by ~70% or so. But also you lose vastly less stamina.

Demon Spear can be fully parried, and like most spears it's not too hard to do.

Parrying in PvP is all about baiting people to attack rather than actually timing it correctly, though. There's too much lag to reliably parry based on animations, most of the time.