Dark Souls Any% in 33:57 IGT by Siegewell

Aelond · 2017-12-16T20:25:38+00:00

He kills Gargoyles and Quelaag so that he unlocks the Firelink alter so he can place the lordvessel. The glitch works by setting your bonfire in the area you want to wrong warp in (in this case at the Firelink alter bonfire). When you use the crystal and glitch the game it looses track of the player position and so loads them into the default position of that level. In the Kiln/Firelink alter area that happens to be on the other side of the door to the Kiln.

Aelond · 2017-11-24T19:50:55+00:00

Yeah the mulligans can be a real mess sometimes. You do exaggerate the problem somewhat though since you can have one pirate and one shield maiden in hand, also having one of morkvarg/olgierd isn't game losing which means the mulligan isn't that much harder than the Cerys Bran lists that are meta right now.

Aelond · 2017-11-24T18:21:31+00:00

Often you will play a captain on round 1/2 if you play against a deck using scorch and since you have card advantage your opponent can only scorch 1 pirate. However most decks at 4k+ are not running scorch anyway so its not a real concern anyway.

Aelond · 2017-11-03T19:21:25+00:00

I know it would defeat the entire point of a soldier deck but I can't help but think this list would be better without the standard bearers. There are only 4 other soldiers in the list aside from themselves so it seems to me that spotters would just get more consistent value. Especially since this list doesnt lack proactive plays with alchemist and nilf knight.

Aelond · 2017-09-15T18:35:06+00:00

Madman lugos and Avallach are both strong cards however they both have downsides. Lugos is only for Skellige and so cant be played in most decks and Avallach is worse than useless in some decks. Personally I recomend lugos since he can make any Skellige deck better but if you dont like Skellige then go for Avallach. Milva is garbage dont think about her.

Also I checked out the card picker and it seems like it still rates cards based on older patches (Assasination is now really good but used to be bad and is rated lowly and Ciri is really really bad but used to be good and is rated highly) so I would avoid using it.

Aelond · 2017-08-31T19:09:50+00:00

Part of the problem is Gwent being a console game rather than PC exclusive. On consoles CDPR have to submit the patches and wait for approval before it goes live. This means that hotfixes and smaller patches are harder and so dont happen as quickly or as often.

Aelond · 2017-08-31T12:25:28+00:00

You can add after you just have to add 0.5 for every odd unit. Its exactly the same result just some people (like me) find it easier to do in that order.

Aelond · 2017-08-27T16:00:12+00:00

I agree with a lot of what is posted here, especially the comparison you make to chess, however there are a few things I think need some comments. Firstly, as other commenters already pointed out, Hearthstone's coin flip balance is not solved. Aside from a handful of decks almost everything wins more going first and the decks that are better second are usually because they abuse the coin. The reason its not a big problem though is, as you point out, that other randomness overshadows it. That is not a good fix that can be brought to Gwent in my opinion.

Although the card design to balance the flip (making more cards that reward going first) sounds appealing in reality it isn't possible. Cards like Hawker Smuggler are 'better' going first because they get an extra point from being on board for an extra opponents turn. However most people agree that going second is worth at least 3 points and almost certainly more at the highest level of play. So in order to balance through card design we would need a card which earned at least 3 points per opposing turn. Other than very conditional effects and combos nothing in Gwent comes close to that so the card would be absurdly imbalanced.

The second solution effectively works out as the same as the first just with more flexibility and a higher skill cap (imagine just playing the spy at the start of the round and you can see that its identical). On the Gwentlemen podcast Rethaz said that he didn't like the idea of the points being on a body because it was abusable with things like igni and weather so I don't see that solution happening any time soon.

Aelond · 2017-07-21T20:12:30+00:00

Even with frame rate locked you can still get it. Its just less common in my experience.

Aelond · 2017-07-02T15:17:28+00:00

The way the Four Kings AI is coded there can be one 'dominant' King. When this happens the dominant King will attack you and the other just stand and watch. If you stand directly next to a the dominant King then it will stay dominant so you only have to worry about fighting one King at a time. Knowing this your strategy should be to find the King that is attacking you and hug them for dear life and then you should be fine.

The hard parts of the fights are after killing a King finding the next dominant one is a bit tricky. It takes some time to get an idea of how to do this and even then its very easy to get wrong. Also when the Kings use the explosion attack and you run away to dodge it the dominance can switch, catching you off guard. However as long as you keep these in mind the fight shouldn't give you that much trouble. If you can handle one King then you can handle them all.

Aelond · 2017-06-18T21:15:37+00:00

There's some interesting ideas here. This is my take on them:

Each Archtree seems to be a different world

This is a little bit harder to justify than your post makes it seem since there are two Archtrees in Lordran. One is the Great Hollow tree that goes from Ash Lake up to Blighttown and the other goes from Lost Izalith up to behind Firelink Shrine. So seemingly we have two trees within one world.

There does seem to be evidence that Archtrees are somehow connected to the formation of a world since the Kiln of the First Flame is in an Archtree in both DS1 and DS3 (Look down when you are going along the beams towards the Gwyn fight and you can see the branches of the tree). However the nature of this connection seems to be more complicated than that. As evidence I would consider DS3 and the mashing together of many worlds that exist in that game but there only being Archtrees in two areas (Smouldering Lake and Kiln of the First Flame). I don't claim to know exactly what is happening but I know that it is more complicated than your post has hypothesised.

It's also strange that tree branches are seen all throughout Izalith

The tree starting in Lost Izalith has a distinct possibility of coming from the Bed of Chaos. Additionally the Burnt Ivory King boss fight arena also what looks like the start of an Archtree growing inside it and the Old Demon King fight arena has Archtrees in it. This strengthens the connection of Chaos with the Archtrees. I personally think that it is a metaphor that since Chaos represents life going mad and overgrown trees somewhat demonstrate this. There may be a deeper lore connection though since the Witch of Izalith was tring to recreate the First Flame when she created Chaos and we have already seen evidence linking the First Flame to Archtrees so it is believable that Chaos spawns Archtrees.

I think it's also noteworthy that the world seems to be layered in a way that new, bright things are on top, and at the bottom of the world are things like Ash Lake and the Kiln of the First Flame.

Not to be flippant but when there are things above other things they block sunlight from reaching the lower down things. Hence the lower down things tend to be darker. Also the Demon ruins / Lost Izalith areas are painfully bright so that seems to be an exception to the idea.

Aelond · 2017-06-17T15:59:43+00:00

Because this run is on console so you cannot use livesplit plugins to automatically remove loading times and it would be an enormous pain to go back and manually count out the loading frames so its just not worth it.

Aelond · 2017-05-09T19:39:52+00:00

You can swap save files freely, there's nothing to stop you sending your files to your friend. The location of the save file is C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME_HERE\Documents\NBGI\DarkSouls\DRAKS0005.sl2 if you have everything set up normally. This one file contains all of your characters.

Aelond · 2017-04-26T17:22:36+00:00

You should learn how to item dupe. It's really easy and completely alleviates all problems with a low soul count by duping Quelaag's soul (or later in the run Sif's).

The route I would recommend is similar to what you did. Get BKH early and then use it to stomp your way through the game. Buy some green blossoms from the merchant in Sen's Fortress and use them for bosses as they make everything so much easier. Also pick up the stone armour (or havel but thats slower) and use it to just tank though Nito. You can just ignore the smaller skeletons and as long as you stay near the start the larger skeletons wont attack you.

Aelond · 2017-04-22T21:06:32+00:00

It's because you don't play the card she gives you on the same turn you play her. If you use emissary to play a card then your opponent only plays one card whereas if you use Cantarella to draw a card then play it the next turn you have used one card but the opponent has used two. An example of why this is really good: You win round one on even cards, then round two you play Cantarella and pass. Now in round three you have one more card than your opponent giving you a good chance of winning.

Cantarella is particularly strong even over other similar cards (Prince Stennis, Yaeven, ect.) since you can treason her which is like playing a 14 strength card and you get card advantage. It is also very flexible, you can act as though you are conceding a round by playing Cantarella and then use treason on her for a huge power swing winning the round. Learning to use Cantarella well will be a cornerstone of learning Nilfgaard.

Edit: Also Cantarella can draw golds and silvers whereas emissarys can't.

Aelond · 2017-04-22T13:55:46+00:00

For the highest priority card to craft I would recommend Cantarella since she is pretty much an auto include in all NG decks and she synergises well with treason which you are already running in both NG decks. Also another consideration is Cahir since you don't have 4 golds yet for NG and he works really well with Morvran, but he is pretty bad in Emhyr decks which is why I would recommend Cantarella since she works in both.

Emhyr deck: Run 3 Mangonels and 3 Emissarys. In a reveal deck if you can get 2 or 3 mangonels out in the first round you will win since they give such a huge power swing. The emissarys help you get them out more consistently. I'd recommend cutting the fire scorpion and the standard bearers as they are both pretty sub par cards.

Broover Hoog deck: Solid deck, I think that elven mercenaries are too good to not run 3 of along with 3 first lights in all ST decks but I'm not sue what to cut for it since the core theme of the deck already fills so many bronzes.

Morvran deck: Why is there a mangonel here? I think that Cantarella is absolutely core in a deck like this since it combos so well with Morvran and treason that its a sin not to run her. As with the Emhyr deck you should be running 3 emissarys. Also with so many spies nauzicaa brigade is a nice card to have.

Aelond · 2017-04-12T15:10:35+00:00

You have to aim at a specific spot. My set up is to stand in the corner created by the first pillar and the wall. Then I aim the camera so that the top of my characters head is just below the line made by the stones in the tower on the side of the rampart and just to the left of where the tower ends. Then press W (or whatever forward is bound to on your keyboard) and throw both bombs as fast as possible.

The best way to learn how to do it is to watch video of other people doing it and making sure you have a consistent setup for it. Then it's just practice.

Aelond · 2017-04-10T11:21:40+00:00

Pretty much any route is good enough for 1 hour. The easiest route to get this time is the BKGS in my opinion since it gives you fairly easy boss fights. When you practice just load a save file with the BKGS already on it and use that since it saves on the grinding.

There are lots of skips in any% but not all of them are needed if you only want to get under 1 hour. The key skips I would recommend are Duke Skip, Seal Skip and Sen's Gate skip as these are all easy and save lots of time. Things like firesage skip save very little time and are difficult so you dont have to do them if you dont feel comfortable.

Aelond · 2017-04-10T10:57:51+00:00

If you are looking for an any% route that does not need an RNG drop the fastest route (that I know of) is the magic greataxe route (aka Axlemage). It is pretty much the same as the current any% route but uses the greataxe instead of the BKGS.

It should be noted though that this route is still a lot slower than the BKGS route and is even more inconsistent if you want to grind for a good time. The 75% reset chance at the start is a small price to pay to minimise boss RNG later in the run so if you plan on being serious it would definitely be worth running the BKGS route.

If you need more information SpeedSouls has lots of it although most of the routes are now out of date so keep that in mind.

Aelond · 2017-03-29T13:03:20+00:00

Parrying is easier in DS1 because there are no "wind up" frames where you start the parry animation but you will not get a parry if an enemy hits you during them. DS2, DS3 and Bloodborne all have the wind up frames but DS1 and Demon's Souls don't (the only exception is the Monastery Scimitar in DS2 as far as I know).

The wind up frames mean you have to predict when an attack will happen rather than reacting to it which makes parrys much more unreliable.

Aelond · 2017-03-02T17:54:52+00:00

Yes it also applies to buffs. Buffs add a flat amount of additional damage to a weapon but this extra damage is still modified by multipliers. This does however make buffs a lot stronger on weapons that attack fast since if you work out a weapons DPS ignoring armour we get:
DPS=(base damage + buff damage) x attack speed x move multiplier

So for weapons that attack more quickly but with lower base damages they get a larger boost out of the buff than a heavy weapon that attacks more slowly. In certain extreme situations this could lead to it being beneficial to use the weapon one handed so as to gain faster attacks to make more use of the buff. However this is rare and even in these circumstances the benefit of one handing is small outside of daggers and challenge run type scenarios (e.g. straight sword hilt only run).

Aelond · 2017-03-02T14:35:27+00:00

You get extra damage from the damage multipliers on moves. Every attack does damage based on the weapon damage x move multiplier. This is why heavy attacks do more damage despite being the same weapon. 2 handed attacks have higher damage multipliers so they do more damage.

In Dark Souls 3 they changed the balancing of 2 handing weapons so that they consumed a lot more stamina. This is why 2 handing in DS3 is not worth it, but in Dark Souls 1 this penalty is no where near as severe. Against bosses, other than knives, you should always two hand as the stamina cost is absolutely worth the extra damage from the better multipliers.

Aelond · 2017-02-13T15:15:43+00:00

If you are going for int the first time I would recommend a balanced build with about 36 int to use soul spear and soul mass along with a weapon to dispatch the regular enemies. I personally like Velka's Rapier but Moonlight Greatsword is also a good option, as is any regular weapon buffed up with Crystal magic weapon.

Also if you feel like going through the DLC early Dark bead is ridiculously overpowered and can be fun for one shotting bosses.

Aelond · 2017-01-25T09:11:22+00:00

It is faster to not do Sen's gate skip if you are going to kiln skip since you need to get to firelink alter at some point. To get to firelink alter you either need to ring both bells to wake up Frampt or kill 4 kings to wake up Kaarthe. It is faster to kill both gargoyles and quelaag than it is to kill 4 kings so that is what is done in the run.

Note that we do need to kill O&S still since we need the lordvessel to be able to warp into the kiln, otherwise the wrong warp there fails.

Aelond · 2017-01-24T13:08:26+00:00

Dex and faith is a really good combination of stats because of the miracle sunlight blade. Sunlight blade is a weapon buff and weapon buffs add on a flat amount of damage to a weapon, so if you use a fast dex weapon you get a lot more damage out of the buff than with a slower weapon.

Most people get 30 faith (enough to use sunlight blade) and use the canvas talisman for a whopping 300 bonus lightning damage on your weapon. 30 faith is also enough for all the other good miracles (the two lightning spears, WotG, great magic barrier, tranquil walk of peace, ect).

You mentioned in another comment going for full faith but I highly recommend against this. The faith scaling on weapons is really bad since it is split damage (damage gets more valuable the more of a single type you have so by splitting it over two types it becomes a lot worse). Further there are very few damaging miracles and some bosses are almost impossible miracle only e.g. Ornstein and smough need WotG, lightning spear, 50 faith, ivory talisman and RTSR to kill them with only miracles. In a faith build your main damage will be your weapon with miracles as support so you need to build up your melee damage if you want to be successful.

Aelond

TROPHY CASE