I barely played this, I got from like the smelter demon bonfire to the old iron king bonfire then got distracted by other stuff, most of the playtime is AFK

i forget what i did this day i made this log a week later

I did so much today its unreal
Sinner's Rise and the part of Lost Bastille I didn't do (ruin sentinels), Belfry Luna
the ENTIRETY of grave of saints through to Black Gulch.
Went back to Heide's to get into the blue sentinels.
also went back and did a bart (leaving this typo its funny) of FoFG i missed
Hunstmans Copse
and lastly, Shaded Woods

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

apparently elemental attack bonuses do not apply to resins (unless the weapon already has an element) because fuck you. very sad. I did heide's, wharf, and a good chunk of lost bastille

shit dude return to drangleic started like 2 weeks ago how did i forget. doing a build that primarily uses resins and shit. apparently they do not scale with elemental attack ups unless the weapon already has that elemental damage, which is CRINGE.

Did FoFG, quit in lost bastille cause i was tired

Grinded in belfry sol to get the hidden weapon spell from the bell keepers, even invaded real players a few times!
Also tried to help people out in iron passage before saying "fuck it" because even not as the host that place sucks ass. Also grabbed the last soul of nadalia in brume tower.
Also also used a bonfire ascetic in tseldora so i could fight freja again so i could get the sorcery from that too. Only sorceries left are in eleum loyce, so thats where i'm heading next!

Beat shulva and also did brume tower

Shulva stuff, almost to elana

Did the giants memories and beat vendrick

Did looking glass knight, shrine of amana (ass as usual), undead crypt, aldia's keep, and dragon aerie.

Not a ton of stuff, just drangleic castle (dragonrider fight, the loop around from the bonfire after that)

Did brightstone cove tseldora as well as the gutter and black gulch, which means that its on to drangleic castle!

Bamco support got back to me. I am soft-banned. don't know why, never will. oh well.

Did earthen peak and iron keep, and then attempted to get summoned (and failed) I have gotten so paranoid that i somehow might've gotten softbanned that I've emailed Bandai Namco support about it. we'll see the result of that

Did a tiny bit of shaded woods, and then did huntsmans copse and a bit of harvest valley. Also went down to the gutter (just the start) to grab some items. Also joined the blue sentinels and did not get summoned at all. I tried to invade manually with the cracked blue eye orb, and the message for finding worlds freaked out, and i'm not sure if thats a bug or not. I had to reload the area to get it to disappear.

Did the rest of lost bastille and fought Lost Sinner, then did a bit of shaded woods (up to the bonfire past vengarl)

Did the rest of Heide's, did no man's wharf, and then did the pursuer fight right outside mcduffs

I had the idea for this character during my last run, so I made it as soon as i beat the game.
big and smart, aka Spellhoarder Crelm (DS2 has an absurdly small character limit on names so i couldn't use the name i wanted and just did "big and smart" :(
Anyway, the idea is a heavy character (nearly always 100% equip load), high vit, high int, high adp, less of a focus on spells, but a big focus on a great hammer with magic damage
I did FoFG and then lost bastille through to Ruin Sentinels, and then stopped.

2 tries to beat burnt ivory king, about 5 to beat sir alonne, and then 1 to do the whole end game gauntlet, very nice!

Did all of eleum loyce except burnt ivory king (and the multiplayer dungeons but we don't talk about those). Next time i'll do that boss, and then attempt to do sir alonne and maybe nashandra?

bailed on sir alonne to do eleum loyce instead, although its not like i'm gonna level up enough to make a meaningful different at this point, so i might as well just fight him.
Although eleum loyce is also kicking me ass, so i'm considering saying "fuck it" and just going for nashandra.

Most of this time was me and a friend trying to summon each other for sir alonne (we weren't able to because souls game co-op sucks ass until DS3)

Did all of brume tower, gave sir alonne a few attempts before realizing i just didn't have the energy to fight him right then

brume tower shit

Beat vendrick (first try today... this shit always happens to me) and then did all of shulva

Did the giant fight in the memory and then got my ass kicked over and over again by vendrick. It was so bad that i'm considering killing ancient dragon to get another giant soul...

did some giants memories

Got summoned to fight velstadt AGAIN, and then cleared undead crypt, also did aldia's keep and dragon aerie

Did shrine of amana, did most of undead crypt and actually got SUMMONED there holy shit dude

Finished drangleic castle and then waited to get summoned... it didn't happen.
I'm so pissed too, when i opened the game there was a summon sign, but i went upstairs to get a sublime bone dust and when i came back less than 5 minutes later it was gone :(

Did the gutter and black gulch in fucking record time holy shit, didn't die once in black gulch. normally that shit takes me like 10 tries.
I then made my way to drangleic castle, which i died more times than i'd like to admit trying to get there...
also i realized just how long this game is, 30 hours and i'm at like, the 2/3 mark. I don't even die that often.

Finished Iron Keep, grinded suspicious shadows to get the shadow gauntlets (i fucking hate whoever decided to put rare drops on an enemy that shows up 4 times in the game, and in base DS2: 2 times during a fucking boss (aka impossible to get their drops without actually grinding)

Did brightstone cove tseldora, I fucking hate that area. Also went back and did belfry luna and then started iron keep

i'm too lazy to type out what i did today

didn't do a ton, killed najka, did doors of pharros (but not royal dog authority cause that boss sucks ass). Did harvest valley and beat covetous demon in earthen peak before stopping.
Got lucky and got a manikin knife drop, and then got really pissed because it seemed to be worse in every way to the default knife. However, it turns out that the wiki and all the other documentation i found just doesn't seem to document the bleed bonus multiplier on weapons? so the manikin knife has a ridiculously high one, but because the wiki doesn't show it, the manikin knife just looks worse in every way (except like 3 phys damage) the the default dagger for bleed builds.

didn't do a ton honestly, basically just did huntsmans copse, most of shaded woods, and prayed that i would get summoned (i did not)

Did a ton today, did heide's, wharf, bastille (+ sinner's rise, which is barely an area), did most of huntsmans copse, and fought ornstein since the blue sentinels was the quickest way to get a boltstone.

Return to drangleic 2023! doing an archer build because i wanted to for some reason. archery is actually pretty damn fun in this game!

I for some reason thought there was more in the game than what I had left.
I really like the final boss gauntlet, and partially am sad that they added checkpoints after each boss, but its for the best.
although I did get all the way to having 1 hit on Aldia on my first time through (as in, did both bosses without dying) and then died because the game ate my heal input :(
I honestly don't really get WHY Aldia fights you no matter what, I'd get it if it was a "oh no bitch i'm not letting you take the throne", but instead its a "i fight you for no reason and then let you make your choice"
I also still get why I thought first time around that taking the throne was the good ending, because Aldia at the end basically just doesn't give a shit? even though he really did beforehand?
Plus the fact that Nashandra is very "i will kill you and plunge you into dark" and then you can also take the "dark" ending.
so at the end its very mixed messages about what the fuck each ending even is, compared to DS1 where its "do you link the fire or not link the fire", and there's pros and cons (and NPCs) for each.
in this second playthrough i definitely noticed way more NPCs trying to push me towards the dark ending, Vendrick basically straight up says that light causes dark, and that a ruler needs to use both, not forsake one.
which kind of leaves the question of, which ending is which???
the throne ending is arguably a "dark" ending, and the leaving ending is a "neither" ending (which is then confusingly portrayed with the fires getting very strong and then going out?)

its a confusing mess, and not in a good way

beat Eleum Loyce (including the optional boss, which luckily I beat first try, because its runup is hell), did Darklurker (fuck that boss), and then beat Vendrick. only 2 bosses left!

Finished Brume Tower, went back and beat Sinh, and then moved onto Eleum Loyce.
beat Aava, then stopped because of awful rolling ice hedgehogs.
at least bonewheels are funny :(

beat Fume Knight, but there's still the 2 optional bosses of Brume Tower, the Smelter runup sucks and basically requires summons, but the Sir Alonne runup sucks more, but doesn't require summons, so i'm doing that first.
I did not beat him tonight :( I just feel so underlevelled when I do some of the DLC areas, but then I get to Sir Alonne and my level is basically perfect if I don't summon anyone, if I do then it becomes just ridiculous how tanky the bosses become.
I get that its to balance having 2 other people, but it might be a little but overtuned, idk. maybe it just sucks because they're AI phantoms.

left Shulva (without beating it) and went to Brume Tower instead.

Did the giant's memories and then went to shulva... I have realized that I am somehow am not leveled enough to fight sinh. just don't do enough damage while eating through 5 different weapons durability.

all of this time was dedicated to fully looting Aldia's Keep. its a bit cryptic, and by a bit i mean a lot.

yeah shrine of amana was bad lol, the runup to demon of song sucks, since it essentially requires you to strip down, kill some enemies that have acid (and can't be avoided), put your gear back on, run past some enemies and then you're back at the boss. its just tedious.
not to mention that the whole area suffers from what i like to call ash lake syndrome, where the water is nearly impossible to see through (its better but still not great with a torch) and you will fall and insta die in a hole you couldn't see.
I also did undead crypt, and I got scholar'd :(
there's an enemy that rings a bell, which spawns more enemies, right before the boss.
after you kill him, another dude spawns 15 seconds later just to ring the bell.
This does not happen in the original game.

beat The Rotten and made my way to Drangleic castle, i also pretty quickly did looking glass knight and am now in the Shrine of Amana, which i remember being a bit... ehh...

went through the gutter and now i'm in... black gulch... fuck

finished iron keep. god i forgot how fucking AWFUL it was.

Did Freja and now am moving on to iron keep!
I don't know who though 3 AI invasions in an area with essentially a ton of samurai black knights that do a fuckload of damage and are fast was a good idea, but I got through that at least

I have come to the realization, poison infusion sucks.
I was hoping that it'd become something to pick up for the lack of strength i have since it levels based on dex and adp.
unfrotunately, I was wrong.
while the damage poison does is nothing to scoff at (around 1k damage), in the amount of swings that it takes you to poison an enemy (if they're not immune), you would've done the same if not more damage with an uninfused weapon :(

I wish the infusions were a bit more useful. it seems like most enemies have default resistances, and infusions are only really helpful if you are on a build that doesn't level strength or dex. in every single scenario, it just lowers the scaling for str and dex and ups it for either int or faith, if it ups them at all.
In the case of poison, it doesn't scale and upgrading your "poison attack bonus" just decreases how many times you need to hit an enemy to poison them. its pretty negligible.

The different elements in the souls games have always been kinda... eh?
while some enemies are more or less resistant to some things, it usually is just not worth it to specialize into an element when you can hit them without one for more damage consistently.
I wish they were better, but i'm not sure what I would prefer, its pretty hard to tell what enemies are strong or weak against, and i'd rather just not have to deal with type matchups in a game where you stick essentially to one weapon, maybe 2.
maybe if they just did a bit more?
i.e. if they were more than just "damage type"
maybe fire does a little bit of dot, electric does more poise damage, and so on?
idk what i would do with stuff like dark or magic though. maybe for them just scaling based on other stats is enough.
poison, toxic, and bleed are essentially the same thing.
poison does high damage, toxic does more damage.
bleed is at least sort of unique because it instantly does 200 damage and lowers max stamina to 75% for a bit.
maybe poison should have a slow burn effect, while toxic is much faster, but burns out quicker?
right now they are identical aside from the damage done (and you can only get toxic with very specific things.
and on a side note, poison resist does basically fucking nothing, I put on the poisonbite ring in harvest valley and was getting poisoned in seemingly the same amount of time despite my poison resist being DOUBLED

The more I replay this the more I realize just how open it is.
I still haven't beaten Lost Sinner, but I was able to go to huntsman's copse, and from there to harvest valley.
DS1 is not a very open game, and even the times when it is, it still kind of isn't due to how the levels are balanced. up until the lordvessel, the game might as well not be open.
DS2 on the other hand says "FUCK IT, GO WHEREVER"
considering the fact that people seem to love Elden Ring (I haven't tried it yet), maybe people would really like DS2, they just don't want to give it a shot...

felt like replaying DS2

me and the squad jumping down to go fight burnt ivory king.

also beat the game

eleum loyce is p neat. a bit scholar'd tho

fucking belter bemon

shulva sucks

its been so long since the game was actually "difficult" that vendrick was a nice surprise

2 hours of grinding a 5% drop... only 5 of them dropped. also do a LOT of the game. just got to undead crypt

i just want to get summoned

i'm kinda blazing through this game.
did the rest of earthen peak, did iron keep, got invaded by a dude who 2 shot me, got sad because its nearly impossible to get summoned in this game (I JUST WANT SUNLIGHT MEDALS), started a new chapter of fashion souls (we alonne knight now bois), and came to the conclusion that the 2 in DS2 actually is a math equation. DS2 is DS 2; the game is faster (not necessarily a good thing), the damage is doubled, and* the game is rushed about twice as much as DS1!

mmmmm this game has some serious conveyance issues

accidentally made my way to lost sinner... it was easy.
did a lot of other various shit, started shaded woods, made my way to black gulch, finished heide's tower of flame, finished no-man's wharf, fought some rats, grinded some way WAY too rare basic ass titanite shards, and generally got mad at poor game design.
seriously why is the regular game way harder than any of the bosses

purse-ooer.
also dragonrider
also this game has a lot of problems... like... a LOT of problems, like maybe more than DS1 problems and i've only played it for 7 hours

Dark Souls.... 2!

honestly I think i'm done for now.
the cleric starting build is so bad that i'm stuck on fucking dragonrider.
dragonrider!!
its not like I have much of a choice because the first miracles are past him, and then hexes are in the next next area.
so what do you do when your build is designed out the gate to be bad with melee, but you can't use spells?

wanted to do a Hex build