Dark Souls: Upgrading Weapons and Armor

I will, OnionBro... 

So, I reloaded my original save file.  It wasn't as odd as I thought it'd be, but it did make it very clear what things are learned early and which don't sink in until much later.  My character is a 50 strength cleric with 14 faith and 18 dex.  At least he was before I started messing with him again.  We'll get into that later.  What I'd like to talk about here is how ignorant I was on the topic of upgrades during my first play through.  I had no idea what I was doing and opted to just put it off until later... which resulted in a Gwyn fight in 100% un-upgraded armor and only a single +15 weapon that I bagged in favor of a +12 that did more damage.

Hopefully, understanding the mistakes I made will help you, the new Dark Souls player, avoid them yourself. The short version is "use all your souls for upgrading weapons/armor before you level up your character."  For the "probably too long winded" version...





Upgrading Armor

This is something I really didn't have a grasp on at the start and even though I put over 70 hours in on my cleric, I never upgraded his armor.

So, what's so confusing about upgrades?  You spend resources, the stuff becomes more useful.  How could you screw that up?  I screwed this up by being nervous I'd find something better than what I had.  I wasn't sure where to get the upgrade materials and was concerned about being locked into inferior stuff.  That meant I was "waiting" for the perfect set to drop.  Every time I found gear I'd put it all on, check out each piece and compare it to what I was using before.  I had very little game knowledge and the stats screen can be intimidating.  I get more slash resist but less curse resist... which is better?  This left me at the final boss in the game without a single upgraded piece of armor.

Additionally, every set of armor has a unique weight.  As you're leveling up for the first time your "equipment load" goes up.  Then there are the two rings that can increase your equipment load even further.  Each weapon and shield has its own weight as well.  For example, the armor I'm wearing in the screen shot up top is the Black Iron set.  When I found it, I couldn't walk with it on.  I can mid roll wearing it now.  Havel's Shield weighs 26 units.  The Heater Shield weighs 2.  Everything has its own strengths and weaknesses and if you're smart you can make yourself pretty durable and balance that durability with mobility while covering all the resist bases without having to max out your weight.  If it was just a choice, I'd prefer to fast roll.  The only problem with that is a strength character like my cleric typically uses very heavy weapons.  Those weapons can be a huge chunk of your equipment load.  Add in some armor with poise and you'll be on the verge of fat rolling.  So, as you're exploring Lordran you'll be finding things and trying to compare them with what you've got in your bags, but you have no idea what else is out there to be found.  You also have no experience with equipment load to lean on as you level up.  Maybe the Black Iron set is going to be your favorite set once you have 40 endurance, but right now it's simply too heavy.  Does that mean you should upgrade something else or wait for the Black Iron set to be useful?  Do you need the upgrades now?  Will you need them later?

In the end I opted to not upgrade anything.  Didn't want to waste resources I didn't know how to farm.  Also, didn't really want to farm on stream.  Was it the best choice?  Nope.  I could have had significantly higher durability regardless of what I chose.  Oh, and did I mention some armor can't be upgraded?  Well, I wore 3 of 4 pieces that couldn't be upgraded... so that made upgrading even more confusing.  It's something I have a better perspective on now, but back then... not so much.

There's no reason to level up your character first and then upgrade your gear later.  You can buy the titanite shards from Andrei.  You can farm large titanite shards from the leaches in Blightown.  Once you have access to Sens Fortress (and better yet, Anor Londo) you have access to merchants that sell large shards.  If you're progressing through the story and killing bosses, co-oping, or pvping you should get plenty of souls to buy the upgrade materials.  You should upgrade what you're wearing even if it's only to "waste" them on gear that you will eventually become obsolete.  At the very least you should be upgrading through the "large shard" upgrades as everything you need is for sale without limit.  You can always buy more.  When it comes to the upgrades that require chunks, it's up to you if you'd rather wait and see or go and farm them from New Londo darkwraiths.  Not wanting to "waste chunks" is no reason to keep everything at +0.  You get so much benefit from upgrading (especially chest armor that gets the most stats per soul/titanite invested) that it doesn't make sense to hold out for any reason.


Weapon Choice/Upgrades aka Why The Drake Sword is Confusing

If I had to think of a real weak spot in the learning curve, this would be it.  Especially because I was guided to the Drake Sword (200 flat AR) very early in my play through.  The mace I was using prior to the Drake Sword only had an AR of 95.  The difference was mind blowing.  I went from struggling with every hollow to  happily moving through the game.  From time to time the "you shouldn't be using the Drake Sword" stuff came up in the chat, but I didn't understand why not.  I can do so much damage with the Drake Sword, why would I switch to a slower, weaker weapon?

The chat seemed pretty unified in the opinion that I should be using the claymore.  I had it in my bag already, but was not enjoying the lower attack damage and slower attacks.  I couldn't upgrade anything at this point so I was stuck trying to understand why the claymore should be used when it has nothing better than the Drake Sword.  It wasn't until long after I rang both bells that I put the Drake Sword down for good.  I finally had my claymore upgraded to the point where it was doing significantly more damage than the Drake Sword and started understanding why everyone told me I should use it.

If it wasn't for the chat being insistent about me getting rid of the Drake Sword I would have been the next guy in full Havel's armor with a drake sword trying to kill O&S in Anor Londo (and I've run into them while co-oping... it's ugly).

I was glad that the chat recommended the claymore because it has a very comfortable move set.  You get sweeping strikes in every relevant direction and a long distance poke.  It made sense for me, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I wanted to try more weapons.  Especially the super heavy strength weapons that were behind that 50 strength barrier. The only problem I had was I did not understand how to compare weapons beyond their look, requirements, and move set.  Why?  Because you can't compare an un-upgraded weapon to an upgraded one and have any idea which is going to be better.  After you've been through the game once you'll have a much better perspective, but my first run was basically without any idea what was going on.  Why would I pick a zweihander over a claymore?  The claymore is faster and lighter!  Which 50 strength weapon should I use?  I can't even test the move set 1 handed until I have 50 strength.  How do I know I'll like it?  Where do I even get the upgrade materials?  I keep finding them every now and again, but I sure don't have enough to upgrade everything.  It felt very demoralizing to look at my supply of titanite and realize that I only had enough to upgrade 1 or 2 weapons to +14 and couldn't compare them properly without upgrading.  Farming was a no-no for my first play through.  I had no idea where to do it and felt it would be too boring to broadcast.  That meant I had to "know what to do before knowing what to do" with weapons.  I just stuck with the chat's favorite, the claymore.

You should have a +5 weapon ASAP.  That weapon should go to +10 as soon as you get the large ember (very close to the beginning of the game).  You can buy the titanite shards (take your weapon to +5) from Andrei.  You can farm large titanite shards (to +10) from the leaches in Blightown.  Once you have access to Sens Fortress (and better yet, Anor Londo) you have access to merchants that sell large shards.  There's no reason to dump huge numbers of souls on leveling up your character until you have a very good idea of which weapons you want to use and have those weapons to at least +10.  You may find that you simply love a weapon that scales on a different stat than you originally planned to max out and it would be frustrating to waste points where they aren't going to help you.

The only exception to this rule is if you know which weapon you want, but don't have it yet.  In that case, you've already been through the game once, so stop breaking my chops!

Elemental Weapons

Elemental weapons are their own special animal.  They do high damage but do not scale with stats.  They are best left to "minimized" characters who are going to stop leveling main stats (str, dex, int, fai) once they reach the requirements but want to do maximum damage.  If you're not concerned about being the lowest level possible, stay away from elemental weapons and just crank up your main stat that scales the best with your favorite weapon.  Scaling goes from "S" (best), A, B, C, D, and E (basically doesn't scale). If you see a "-" it means that the weapon has zero benefit from that stat.

My only elemental weapon on my 50STR cleric is [er... will be] a +5 lightening compound bow.  It allows for some decent damage without scaling.  Every other bow I can think of scales with dexterity, so if I want to be able to hit for 200-ish damage per arrow, I need to make it elemental.  Outside of that one weapon, everything else is going to +15.

A good example of why you don't want elemental weapons on a build with 40+ main stat is my great scythe. I have two on the same character.  One is lightening +5 and the other is +15.  The character who owns these two has 45 dexterity.  they both do about 500 damage on paper.  The lightening weapon does 250 physical damage and 250 lightening damage.  Due to how the game calculates resists, the +15 weapon does way more damage per hit on everything besides enemies that are extremely weak to lightening specifically.  Also, the +15 weapon can be buffed with all the glorious buffs and resins the game has to offer giving it the potential of doing a TON more damage than the +5 lightening version.

Again, elemental weapons really don't have much of a place on a character that's stacking a main stat.  If you are not trying to stay at the minimum level possible for a weapon's use, you don't need to worry about making elemental weapons.


My experience with the weapon selection window

When you open your weapon screen you'll see a list of all the weapons you have inside of a white border.  The main thing I was looking at on this page was how much damage a weapon could do.  It's right next to the thumbnail of the weapon.  As a new player, why wouldn't you trust that the damage number was the damage number?  It wasn't until the Kiln of the First Flame that I realized that number is 100% useless.

On the right side of the screen is a different box that has your character's stats in it.  If you press Y, that box changes to offensive stats.  If you look at the attack rating of the weapon in the hand you want to compare you'll actually get the total attack rating instead of just what the weapon does without adjusting for your stats.  Alternately, you can also add up all the numbers on the advanced view for the weapon (by pressing X), but there's no reason to.  I had no idea that the white number on the main weapon selection screen was just base, un-adjusted damage.  That made me hesitant to try new things because, on paper, they were inferior.

All it would take to make this easier to read would have been to include "total attack rating" somewhere on the weapon's detail page... or to go by attack rating on the inventory screen... but I had no clue they DIDN'T do that, so I was in the dark... until I had already attempted Gwyn a dozen times.

Also, the way resists are calculated, the actual attack rating is not as significant when you're trying to compare elemental and non elemental weapons.  It's complicated and I'm not 100% how it works, but I do know that any weapon that does two different types of damage will do less damage overall than a weapon that only does one type of damage.  That makes even the Attack Rating stat less useful.  You'll have to actually try weapons out to see what kind of numbers you put out... and that requires time, experience, and upgrade materials to do properly... all of which you don't really have on your first play through.

I finished my first run through the game with: +15 claymore, +12 demon great axe, +10 zweihander and a whole pile of un-upgraded stuff... and immediately started NG+... and then a new character... and then another... and then bought a copy for the Xbox...and made a slew of characters there...

In the end, I guess all the troubles I had learning the upgrade system really didn't stop me from loving the game, but I can see how with less success and less guidance I could have been very frustrated.

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