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[Girlinhat]

Raw'ing the Zwiehander wasn't my best idea, but I've just been guessing on stats and whatnot. Since I don't do PvP and I'm on my first playthrough, I haven't given actual stats a second thought.

Basic rundown?

Raw -> Improves damage, but doesn't use stats
Regular -> Uses your character stats
Crystal -> More powerful, but cannot be repaired
Fire -> Not the best, uses no stats
Lightning -> Better than fire, uses no stats
Divine -> Uses Faith instead of dex/str
Occult -> Uses Faith instead of dex/str, almost the same, but hits different enemies harder
Magic -> Uses Int instead of dex/str
Chaos -> Unique, scales with the amount of humanity on your HUD bar - potentially the most powerful

Your basic ones are:
Greatswords/axes/hammers - Regular or Crystal (if you're feeling fancy)
Straight/curved swords/spears - Regular, Fire, or Lightning
"I'm a sorcerer" - Magic
"Miracles are the best" - Divine or Occult
"I'm a dickwraith I love to harvest some noobs!" - Chaos

[Lectorog]

Weakness: Giving up

In his defense, the game is total garbage for the first few hours, and i say that as a person who has a hard on whenever someone says "Dark Souls".

But it's the first few hours that I've played the most!
Top blocks for me, in order of blocking power (rather than frequency) :
 Four Kings
 Capra Demon or O&S being too hard for fun
 underpowered character
 underleveled character (that I stubbornly refuse to level up)
 boring character
 needing another character slot for my super fun new idea (that will likely be canned after 4 hours straight then never returning)

I just hate the Four Kings.

RE: Raw: Can be pretty useful for SL1 runs.

And the highest chaos upgrade with 10 humanity (max for scaling) only does slightly more damage than the highest fire upgrade, so it's only useful for people who like the idea more.

[Zyxl]

@Lukewarm

If you modify a weapon to a type you don't want, IE Raw, you can always downgrade/recycle it later then modify it again into something else, IE +15. Raw is an excellent choice until you have access and resources for +15, and is essential for any SL1 run because of it's early availability. So stick with Raw for now and change it later.


Fun fact, the weapon downgrade/recycle thing allows you to repair crystal items too, though you'll need the resources to repeatedly re-upgrade it.

[Girlinhat]

Fun fact, the weapon downgrade/recycle thing allows you to repair crystal items too, though you'll need the resources to repeatedly re-upgrade it.

Which is the big deal, since it's chunks and slabs.  The regular titanite to upgrade to +10 is cheap as sin compared to the crystal upgrades.  So it doesn't really help, practically speaking.

Only decent for unique weapons, like a zweihander or something.  Greatswords can be bought.

[Lukewarm]

It's a pity I haven't even used my Zwiehander recently. I can't make up my mind between stabby stabby guy with a decent sized sword or if I'm compensating, and it's been outclassed by other, heavier swords for any purposes I could use it for.

[Zyxl]

Which is the big deal, since it's chunks and slabs.

Both of which can be farmed easily from Darkwraiths.

The real catch is that the stat increase isn't terribly significant over +15 and is less than elemental anyway.

[Cthulhu]

Re: Chaos.  Damage is damage.  It can be a problem in PvE to always have 10 humanity if you're fighting tough bosses, but once you're dedicated to PvP you should never be wanting for humanity.

I wouldn't call slab farming darkwraiths easy.  Anyway, dex elemental is outclassed by dex faith.  Darkmoon Blade does its damage independent of the weapon's damage, so quick fast weapons rack up bonus damage /very/ quickly.  The aforementioned Ricard's rapier is an especially fun one.  Parry a guy and hit him six times for bonus 400+ AR each hit in less than two seconds, in addition to the very respectable base damage from an A-scaling weapon at 40 dex.  He's dead as fuck.

[Girlinhat]

Re: Chaos.  Damage is damage.  It can be a problem in PvE to always have 10 humanity if you're fighting tough bosses, but once you're dedicated to PvP you should never be wanting for humanity.

I wouldn't call slab farming darkwraiths easy.  Anyway, dex elemental is outclassed by dex faith.  Darkmoon Blade does its damage independent of the weapon's damage, so quick fast weapons rack up bonus damage /very/ quickly.  The aforementioned Ricard's rapier is an especially fun one.  Parry a guy and hit him six times for bonus 400+ AR each hit in less than two seconds, in addition to the very respectable base damage from an A-scaling weapon at 40 dex.  He's dead as fuck.

Except me.  Infinite poise is best defense!  I could probably get my shield up halfway through your second strike, then you're deflected and getting a facefull of greatsword.

If I don't die to the first parry, that's always what seems to happen...

[CognitiveDissonance]

Raw -> Improves damage, but doesn't use stats
Regular -> Uses your character stats
Crystal -> More powerful, but cannot be repaired
Fire -> Not the best, uses no stats
Lightning -> Better than fire, uses no stats
Divine -> Uses Faith instead of dex/str
Occult -> Uses Faith instead of dex/str, almost the same, but hits different enemies harder
Magic -> Uses Int instead of dex/str
Chaos -> Unique, scales with the amount of humanity on your HUD bar - potentially the most powerful

A few additional notes:
- Raw does use stats, but at a reduced level
- Fire is a really good damage type versus most unarmored players. Vast majority of enemies are vulnerable to fire.
- Lightning is usually good versus heavily armored enemies, and anything resistant to fire
- Divine/Occult have damage bonus (Undead+Demons, or Humans, respectively). This does NOT apply to players.
- Magic, Enchanted, Divine and Occult add magic damage to the weapon
- Chaos only scales to 10 humanity. In my tests, it deals about 10% more damage than equivalent fire.


Also humanity can easily be farmed in a few locations

[majikero]

The problem with Dex/Faith is leveling two damage stat together. In theory, a build with 40dex/50 faith can use sunlight blade/darkmoon blade with a knife weapon, you could kill someone with max poise using normal attack before they smash your face in.

[Cthulhu]

Only the Depths is available pre-Lordvessel though, and compared to Skeleton Babies and Humanity Sprites the Depths is excruciating.

A good dex/faith build (falchion sluggers are especially bad about this) isn't gonna have to worry about poise.  Power within, DMB, unlock, two-hand, fire the bass cannon.

edit:  I am completely trashing the forest right now, it's ridiculous

[Mini]

A good dex/faith build (falchion sluggers are especially bad about this) isn't gonna have to worry about poise.  Power within, DMB, unlock, two-hand, fire the bass cannon.

Unless you want to get hit once and basically just die on the spot you need poise. Not nessecarily a huge amount, but some.

[Cthulhu]

I mean the enemy's poise. 

Speaking of which, if you're not the kind of guy who's gonna be slugging it out, knight gauntlets, knight leggings, wolf ring, boom.  You've hit the first poise line and can choose the rest of your gear for looks.

I think my biggest complaint right now is that there's so many awesome builds I want to try and it takes so long to put them together.  I'm very tempted to use a trainer to quickly set up builds.  When you've got guys running around ruining people's characters and going unpunished, it hardly seems bad to use cheats to set up a perfectly balanced build.

I talked to the hacker, after a third draining.  He always uses voice chat and puts on some horribly embarrassing "cool" voice when he does it.  If his hacks were less harmful he'd be hilarious in an r/cringe kind of way.

[nogoodnames]

Cthulhu, I don't see anything wrong with using a trainer after something like that. That's even worse than curse instakill weapons, at least they don't cripple a character permanently.
I'm glad the worst hacks don't seem to be on Xbox, although it's still pretty painful looking through the book of the guilty. It's like they stopped moderating it. Right now you have to go to something like the hundredth place to find someone without a fake sin level, and even then there are a ton of people with modded stats and infinite health.

Anyway, I was feeling pretty good about my SL 1 run after beating Ornstein and Smough in two tries and going on to kill Gwyndolin in one after that yesterday, so I decided to spend some time with the Forest Hunters before going after Sif.
It turns out I'm not quite good enough to fight at such a huge disadvantage, especially since I dislike running or healing as a phantom.
I did manage one legit kill after I pulled off a perfect prediction parry on a guy using a rapier, and also killed a darkmoon that came after me. Other than that it was a complete slaughterfest, aside from the two times I got to watch my fellow hunters kill a lone host.

I'm going to blame at least some of my deaths on cold medicine messing with my head though. Seems like I fought much more stupidly than usual.

[Sordid]

Speaking of trainers, could you recommend a one that works?I have the same problem as Cthulhu, I want to try different builds but I just don't have the time.