Dark Souls: Results from 2/2/13 and plan for 2/3/13

Here are the goals I set for myself for yesterday:

• Farm large titanite shards in Blightown until I get my Iaito and shield to +10.  COMPLETE
• Pick up Wolf Ring in the woods.  COMPLETE
• Find Elite Knight's Armor. COMPLETE
• Upgrade Pyromancy Flame to ascended +5 NOT ACCOMPLISHED
• Figure out how to upgrade Flame to ascended +5 (lol) COMPLETE
• JOLLY COOPERATION until I can buy all the stuff I need in Blightown. NOT ACCOMPLISHED
• Join Darkmoon Blade COMPLETE
• HAVE LOTS OF FUN ONGOING

Farming Titanite

I farmed plenty of titanite in Blightown while keeping my white sign down to get my Iato and Heater Sheild to +10.  That means of my upgraded weapons I have a +10 Uchi, +10 Iaito, +4 Lightening Great Scythe, and  +5 Estoc.  The Estoc was the first to be upgraded but I became quite tired of it's poor move set for Blightown.  The lack of a vertical attack is a huge weakness when you're constantly dealing with things above you, below you, or things that are very short.  If I upgraded it to +10 I would have been able to give it a better evaluation vs the other weapons I'm carrying, but by the time I had made the choice to change weapons it was out of frustration with the Estoc's move set for PvE more so than for it's poor damage.  Someone made an excellent point in the chat... they said "Estoc would be a great riposte weapon."  I'm trying to parry way more this play through and I'm still doing the majority of damage with critical strikes (back stabs and ripostes) so it would make a ton of sense to have a high crit weapon like the Estoc handy.  I will think about this more and do more research before I make a decision on which direction I'll go with for riposte damage (if I even want to look at it that way).

Equally as important I was able to keep the action flowing while trying to farm Quelaag via my white summon sign.  There weren't a lot of standing around and the stream stayed quite active even though what I was doing was just killing slugs and waiting.  I think I could have done better, but it sure could have been way more boring than it was.

Wolf Ring

I remembered where the Wolf Ring was and went right to it.  The problem is it's just too good to make sense in the way I thought it would.  I'll get back to this later.

Elite Knight Armor

I had a hell of a time remembering where this set was.  I had a mental note "Near Butterfly" but could not remember where the butterfly was.  Turns out I was confused due to the Artorias Door being closed.  I went around the back way at the chat's recommendation and farmed souls in the forest so I could afford the seal.  I learned the Three Black Cats can be "cheesed" by hiding in the trees.  Still wasn't easy, but it was nowhere near as hard as fighting those furry pinwheels in the open.  I made the mistake of telling Alvinia (The leader of the forest covenant) that "No.  I don't mind 'knocking for nothing.'" and she wants nothing to do with me.  Killed all of her friends and went home to request absolution.  Will try again for the Forest Covenant (will explain later).

The Elite Knight set is simply too heavy for me at this point (SL22).  The Wolf Ring gives 40 poise.  I can't match that poise with the Elite Knight Armor without going into mid roll or slower.  For pure defense I can do better with the Elite Knight set, but I'm going to be losing the speed that's so critical for my survival at such low hps.  Even with both the Ring of Favor and Protection and Havel's Ring I can still only fast roll at 15.1 weight.  After jockeying gear around a while I found that the EKA may not be the best choice at my Endurance.  This was disappointing because I have always found a use for a few pieces of this gear in the past and don't like the idea of choosing between poise and speed.  Sure, that's exactly the decision that FromSoftware is forcing, but being in this situation is tricky.  I can probably do without the poise for PvE because I can learn and time the animations.  PvP is another animal all together and I would like to have enough poise to not get staggered by simple weapons, but how much is enough?  I need to do more research.

Ascended Pyromancy Flame +5

191k souls.  That's what I needed to farm last night to get to +5.  I lost about 120k to stupidity, ignorance, and/or over confidence.  I ended up at +3, but that's still about 100k souls away from +5.  I'm also starting to sour on Pyromancy in general.  It's slow, I don't have many casts, and it feels like it's a desperation/PvP skill set to begin with.  Unless I pump skill points into attunement to get more slots (and thus more casts) then I'm still just a dex melee character for the most part.  

Join the Darkmoon Blade

Pulled this off without a hitch.  Turns out it was a bad idea.  The Darkmoon Blade invades DOWN in SL... not UP like the Darkwraithes.  At SL22 I've got very few people below me who are carrying sin.  I went to The Undead Burg, Undead Parish, Depths, Anor Londo, Sens, and everwhere in between spamming my blue orb and didn't get one invasion.  Meanwhile, I was wearing the ring that would teleport me to Dark Anor Londo and didn't get summoned.  Darkmoon Blade is a bust at SL22, but it did make me quite interested in trying the covenant on my NG+ Cleric. 

I left the Darkmoon Blade in favor of another covenant I had never joined before... and now I'm a Gravelord.  I figured that this too would be a massive bust, but after 10 minutes of hanging around undead burg I was in one fight after another.  I had 3 or 4 invaders I was able to repel and the last one killed me.  They were all Darkwraithes with NG+ level stuff in my level range which made it interesting.  Finally, as I was getting killed, I saw a blue phantom come through my summon sign to challenge the Gravelord!  So, it does work!  It may even work BETTER at low SL because people who are doing super low SL NG+ have no interest in dealing with black phantoms.  The only "problem" is you're going to be challenged by some pretty talented Darkwraithes while you wait for people to invade through your sign.

The other "down side" is you don't get to invade while hollow like you would as a Darkmoon Blade.  That's a huge plus for invading once in a while as you're doing other things, but being SL22 just isn't the correct time for it.  As I said above... this may become my Cleric's covenant as he is low enough to avoid most of the 100 to 120 crowd and high enough to invade a bunch of people.  We will see.

HAVE LOTS OF FUN

I marked this as a goal for real... not as a joke and it worked!  I actually thought about this goal while I was playing and it helped me keep my head on straight.  There were a few times I got a little bored running around Blightown, but most of that was because I was being bogged down in the sludge down there.  I plan on picking up the Rusted Iron Ring tonight so I don't have to slosh around anymore when I'm down there.  

One of the really fun things about staying at one SL for a long time is you learn where you can and can't co-op and pvp.  I know I can get summoned at Quelaag because I've been summoned 5 or 6 times already.  I know I can Gravelord the Undead Burg because it worked.  That means if I'm looking to do either of those things somewhere new and it isn't working out I can always go back to where it WILL work once the waiting becomes tiresome.  

I met a new friend in the chat who goes by "MDragonFrost" on twitch (http://twitch.tv/MDragonFrost) He's a SL18 OnionBro who has the knowledge and experience to fluidly move about the world and actually ENJOY the challenges of a low SP character instead of being limited by the low skill points.  It was a lot of fun running through the catacombs with him last night and it made me realize there's even more than I thought out there to learn.  Cool guy, check out his stream some time.  He's always geared like OnionBro and plays on both Xbox and PC.

I also met two other Low SP players at O&S.  I had exactly .01% chance of victory alone.  I had no issue with the fight as a sorcerer and my strength cleric just needed a little work to do it alone (yet I opted for a summon to have it make more sense and keep the stream active), but pyromancy did nothing for me and I couldn't find an opening to do much to either O or S.  When I fought Smough first I was getting poked to death from who knows where by Ornstein, but at least I could survive a shot or two from him.  When I went with Ornstein first, Smough would just line me up for an overhead smashing that would send me back to the bonfire in one hit.  When I brought in the two other low SP characters as summons it was still a rough fight, but it was a successful one.

Things that went well:

• Upgrading the Great Scythe from Catacombs with +4 lightening helped me put out big damage at low SP.  It also has a great move set for both PvE and PvP making it a very welcome addition to my weapon set.
• Killing O&S gave me access to warping which will help reduce time wasted.  
• Upgrading my Heater Shield to +10 gives me a great, low weight option with decent stability and 100% physical reduction.
• Learning to kill the 3 black cats the easy (cheesy) way gives me access to the forest way earlier than usual.  I will use that skill again in the future.
• Meeting new friends who are also low level and seeing how they play has given me hope I can stay lower than average SP for a while and get things done.
• Gravelording was active and fun at an odd time of day in a place I wouldn't have expected.  Also excited to try the Gravelord Sword, but it will cost me several points in Strength that I'm not sure I want to spend.

Things that did not go well:

• SPOILER This is the 3rd time I've let Laurentis get to the Fire Keeper in Firelink Shrine.  The plan was to take him out before he takes her out, but I still have no idea what triggers him to go back to Firelink or what triggers him to move.  Guess it will be play through #4 before I can save her.  What a shame.
• The Iato's only difference from the Uchi is that it has a wide sweeping R2 attack but it costs me leveling Dex to 22.  I could have avoided doing that if I had more game knowledge and knew I could get anything I wanted from the Undead Merchant in Undead Burg from Andrei of Astora.  Looking on the bright side... I could turn one of the two of those weapons elemental/chaos and have a nice high damage weapon.  I also gained game knowledge from trial and error that I'll keep going forward.
• Pyromancy is proving to be less useful than I had hoped.  it's basically another melee attack that I only get in short supply.  It may help down the road with boss fights/tough mobs, but so far I'm a dex melee fighter.  Hopefully I can improve on this.  (NOTE: Pyromancy is cool in PvP, but I've had limited PvP experiences so far)
• Darkmoon Blade is not the place for someone seeking low level PvP.
• I'm losing way too many souls (especially the rewards from boss fights) because I am not going back and spending them on the things I need when I should.  This will improve as I can warp to the Daughter of Chaos bonfire, but until I received the Lordvessel I was hesitant to go all the way back to Blightown for fear of creating a boring stream.  This is one of the things I'm the worst at with this character because I'm NEVER spending souls at a bonfire.  That gives very few opportunities to spend the souls you have without traveling.  I've lost more souls/humanity this run than I have with my other two complete NG clears combined... probably by a multiple of 10.

Goals for tonight

• Finish upgrading Pyromancy flame to +5
• Get the drops from Undead Asylum
• ring
• shield
• slab
• Gravelord the Depths 
• If I have a bad experience gravelording the depths, Either A. kill [Sif,] the 4 kings, and join the Darkwraithes or B. Join the Forest Covenant.
• Make a better evaluation of where to freeze my level.  
• Decide if Gravelord Sword is worth leveling for.
• Figure out proper Endurance levels (aka equipment load)
• Figure out the location and retrieve "ninja flip" ring
• Find "Large Flame Ember" and take my +5 fire claymore to +9
• NOTE: I should try and locate as many "embers" as I can tonight.
• Try co-op at different bosses I have not defeated before opting to level any skill.

I don't have as clear a picture as I had last night, but goal 1 should prove to be the most difficult as I'll need another huge batch of souls to level my +3 flame to +5.  "Ninja Flip Ring" aka something something dark woodgrain or something ring is one I've NEVER found, so I'd like to see if I like it.  Figuring out where to "freeze" my level should be done before I log off, but if I am unsure I won't level.  I'm currently watching youtube videos of the gravelord sword to see if it's any good... but that will change if I do end up leveling.  Only thing that could be lost is demon titanite, but I don't know what else I'd use it for.

Also, if this become tedious for any reason I'll load up one of my NG+ characters and work on them a bit tonight.

let's do this!  http://twitch.tv/t6srof