I'm actually getting good at PvP. At least not as a Forest Hunter[The dudes who are still human in Darkroot are hella robust], but I've had a fair bit of success with Darkwraith invasions. And without too much backstab/parry cheese[Although the Darkhand is real nice for parrying dinguses], too. Although I guess alpha striking with Homing Crystal Soulmasses + Crystal Soul Spear is also a mite unsportsmanlike. Still, enough people dodge it that I feel its still mostly fair. Highlight was against this one guy in the Crystal Wood, who was obviously much higher level then me and had pretty nice armour and a lightning katana. I got the drop on him by climbing a ladder with my Soulmasses active[Spooked the fuck out of me too] and I rolled off to safety while he drank an Estus. I tagged him with a Crystal Soul Spear for about a third of his health bar once he came down with a plunging attack, but his counterattack combo nearly killed me[I have zero poise because I'm wearing mage robes] before I got a lucky parry & riposte and rolled away. After that, he went full ham and I had a lot of trouble kiting him, even with my Moonlight Butterfly Horn's range. I finally managed to kill him with a stab a split-second before his katana would have impacted my face. I got TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND SOULS from that. Guy must have been on AT LEAST New Game+.
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition
A seperate own, but still pretty cool.
I started in Myrror with Alchemist and seven Sorcery books as Dwarves. I built a couple more cities to support my units with food before clearing the whole continent[This is Myrror, so the nodes have stuff like Great Wyrms and Sky Drakes on them] with Steam Cannons and Hammerhands. I found two towers on my starting continent, which I unlock and then garrison with eight Steam Cannons each. I find my first wizard on the other side, Freya. Freya has no spells I can use and seems pretty chill, so I bribe her into signing a Wizard Pact and then resume building infrastructure in Myrror. I find an adamantine vein, which I build a strictly military city next to, and start upgrading all my units to adamantine-armed ones. I've basically completely filled my starting continent, so I send a Magic Spirit to scout the landmass to the north of my starting continent. Almost immediately, I run into a group of Klackon halberdiers led by some Halfling Slingers. Their controller Ariel also has no spells I want, so I exchange pleasantries and then end diplomacy. Klackon AI is incredibly annoying since it spams Settlers and makes little hives all over the fucking place. They're also really incompatible with any other races, so you can't even conquer them properly. So I cast Invisibility on my Magic Spirit and station them on the tower that the Klackons came through. Kind of a cheap move, but I don't want MY Myrror swarming with useless bugs and Steam Cannons take two turns to build and longer to move over there, even WITH Floating Islands. A diplomatic marriage soon after gives me a Dwarven city on the continent with Ariel's Klackons on it[We're still at peace and none of the Klackons are settlers, so I let them be]. More Magic Spirit scouting discovers a Sorcery Node with a Sky Drake, so I send over a load of Adamantine Hammerhands to beat them up and claim the node. It works out well, but now I'm kinda bored. The new continent is mostly useless desert and only has pathetic ruins and stuff. So I decide to colonize Arcanus through one of my towers. I find a nice and small abandoned continent and spend quite a few turns settling it, enchanting all the roads and giving the two new cities there good garrisons. In the process, I meet the other two wizards: Horus and Kali. Horus immediately gets on my bad side by casting Wind Mastery. I True Disjunction it and establish my own. Horus does the same. I True Disjunction him and recast Wind Mastery. Then Kali True Disjunctions it. At least I bag a couple neat spells from Kali before my overland enchantments offend her too much. Fed up with their antics, I revoke their magic privileges with my newly available spell: Suppress Magic. Suppress Magic takes a whopping 1250 mana to cast and lets Horus put up Wind Mastery again. But when its up, the other wizards get cockblocked HARD: They can't cast any magic unless it succeeds against a 500-point dispel. Sure, it costs 50 mana per turn, but I'm an Alchemist with Dwarves. That means I can turn Gold into Magic[Or vice versa] at a 1:1 ratio and I get a lot more gold from things. I'm easily getting 500 gold per turn, even as I lose 30 mana. Now, Suppress Magic only says that it blocks OVERLAND spells[Which seems to include summons and unit buffs]. I'm not sure if Disjunction or its variants count[Even if they do, a full strength one might overcome the dispel effect and remove Suppress Magic]. And everyone besides Freya starts casting one every few turns. I have to do two Spell Blasts each turn to keep up with them. And Ariel starts uselessly harassing my invisible Magic Spirit, so things are becoming tedious. So I start preparing my final blow: I begin researching Time Stop and making my invasion force[Nine Adamantine Hammerhands and nine Adamantine Steam Cannons for each wizard]. Meanwhile, I keep killing the Klackons Ariel sends at my invisible Magic Spirit with Psionic Blasts and Spell Blasting down peoples' Disjunctions. After a while, I notice they're Disjuncting less and less often. I take a look at the Magic screen and am amazed that my opponents seem to have NO gold or mana reserves[Kali still prepares a True Disjunction every so often and grows it by ~100 mana a turn, but that's manageable]. Now that I can take a small break from Spell Blasting, I cast Awareness and receive another shock: Freya only has two cities and her fortress is right next to my Arcanus colony[Which, despite the fact that everywizard else hates me, has remained unmolested]. I step up my invasion timetable and wipe out Freya relatively quickly[I lost seven out of nine Hammerhands to the octet of Priests she had guarding her fortress though]. Now that that's over with, I resume maintaining my supernatural cockblock of Spell Blast + Suppress Magic. Until I research Time Stop.Then I wait a few more times to accumulate more gold reserves and get the last of my invasion force ready. Then I cast Time Stop. While time is stopped, I send a force of 9 Hammerhands and 9 Steam Cannons to the fortresses of all the other wizards[Using Wind Walking to cross the water]. Since they all only got banished by this, I had to wipe out their empires. My Hammerhands wore out quickly, but my Steam Cannons proved more resilient: I would cast Mass Invisibility, to protect my Steam Cannons from ranged fire, and then fire away from safety until they all died. In games like these, I really love doing this. Being harmless, except in defense of my territory. Then, in a single night of blood and death, I destroy any opposition and win the game.