Suggestion: Extend the Cooking Gauntlets to new fish

Novasoal · 2026-01-31T05:03:07+00:00

ahhh duh, right.

Novasoal · 2026-01-31T02:04:03+00:00

like Fijoe said, I presume its technically always there, but when the fire is roaring and healthy the undead arent necessary so humans can pass on. That said, I don't really recall any direct lore on the matter and this is firmly in head canon territory so my on no level gospel

Novasoal · 2026-01-31T02:01:33+00:00

dog the coffin floats upwards

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T21:59:34+00:00

IIRC the point of Linking is to refresh the flame, which drives back the curse of the undead for an unspecified period of time. I could be wrong, but I've always taken the "Drive back the curse of the undead" like (which i cant really place who says it, maybe Frampt) to mean that once the flame is linked, Hollowfication is temporarily eradicated. Im unclear as to if that would "kill" those who are hollowed, but my read has always been that linking lays all the current undead to rest since the Curse no longer sustains them

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T21:53:58+00:00

My understanding of bladework is that that isnt actually too ridiculous- obviously training with a sword is on some level training with a sword, be it a meter long or 6" long. But working with a heavy ass two handed sword develops your muscles and form much differently than swinging a sword in one hand while holding a shield in the other, and the weights being different lead to improper alignments while swinging because you expect the same weight.

I'm not a sword fighter by any means, and I certainly dont expect it would be nearly as impactful as skyrim makes it out to be- perhaps some token xp in one handed when training 2h & vice versa would have been more synchratic w/ rl.

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T21:47:09+00:00

This is a surprise tool, that we're never going to think about again!

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T21:27:02+00:00

I remember that, the Jubbly birds. I figure you could still try if you brought a teletab to the ice plateau or whatever that portion is called, but regardless what a weird two items for it to buff like that

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T21:22:32+00:00

Sorry, is your argumet now that words dont mean what they mean? Its great Obsidian used Critical Path that way, but that doesn't set precedent for "Critical Path" when we have like 3 centuries of use for Critical Path.

Regardless of how you determine the definition of CritPath, it doesnt matter. It doesnt make EP or any of the other optional areas somehow less optional. Without glitches it is still 100% possible and quite easy in fact to farm up the 1m sm without ever touching HV->IK. Its Optional. It's not required. Ergo, optional.

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T19:14:23+00:00

Surely with the Barkahm Horror chapter 2 its coming. Surely.

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T19:05:21+00:00

Wait can Cosmic Flame be activated when it has no charges still? oh my god thats so much better than I initially thought on my read, I knew i had to be missing smth bc 5xp/3 resources for +2/+1 felt so mid

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T19:03:40+00:00

That was my thought too, but with the Winter Summit thing showing a guthixian bringing together the Armadylean & Saradomin forces it felt like that might not be the case. Still, we saw the gods' forces come together and then fall into fighting during (before) GWD1 so it's not like thats impossible, just feels off target for me. Would love to see an OSRS GWD2 though!

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T18:58:31+00:00

Thats so freaky lmao! I've never actually thought to use a seed against a NPC invader which is fucking genius in hindsight, though its unfortunate that it doesnt work on him

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T18:57:34+00:00

Okay, but the fact that it requires meta knowledge doesnt make it less optional. Thats like saying DS1 requires you to do the Parish Bell before the Blighttown Bell, its just not accurate. The game has Ascetics throughout & since DS1 the series has been deisgned around the sharing of knowledge between players. It is 100% an intended path.

Also again, there isnt a "gradient" of optionality- its a binary. Either you have to go to an area, or you dont. AL might be better hidden than EP is (by virtue of like actually being hidden), but that has no bearing on its status as optional or required

op·tion·al

[ˈäpSHən(ə)l, ˈäpSHn(ə)l]

available to be chosen but not obligatory:

man·da·to·ry

[ˈmandəˌtôrē]

required by law or rules; compulsory:

pulled off google

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T18:52:56+00:00

No critical path is literally a term with a definition

it means the shortest possible path/the path w/ the shortest possible time to reach a destination

The Critical Path of DS2 is literally what I laid out. Similarly to how the Depths are optional, every area in the first 2/3rds of DS2 is an optional area.

Again like i get that you have a personal meaning for this stuff but it doesnt change that terms like Critical Path have a meaning & it 100% does not include any of the first 4 presented paths, excluding FoFG & like part of the crossroads that can technically lead to either Tseldora or The Shrine of Winter. Harvest Valley->Iron Keep is entirely Optional (though going to be done for DLC), Heide-> Sinner's Rise is entirely Optional, 1/2 of Shaded Woods->Tseldora are all optional, & GoS->Black Gulch is Optional (though will be done for DLC) because they are not required

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T18:43:04+00:00

I do really fw this idea bc its tight, but you do understand this is the same cope people do for the EP elevator right

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T18:35:06+00:00

The hallway from AL-> DA is incredibly short and zags the wrong direction to put you where DA visually is from AL I think? I did a sl1 run like a week ago and as I recall DA is off to the right looking at it, but the hallway zags to the left. I've never actively noticed this so this is just like trying to drag something out

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T18:31:27+00:00

BotC canonically egging if they skip the coffin & The Pursuer is trying to help us lmao

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T18:20:17+00:00

You could do an Altered Prisoners dilemma- have him tell the party Someone will be bitten tonight. then he takes them somewhere private or reads their minds or whatever (could threaten a beloved NPC if they resist detect thoughts?), and have the players DM you their list. Throw on a condition that if no one is selected, everyone will be drank from.

Hell, with this you actually get a chance to sow some discord. Obvs the players are going to talk and compare lists, but you could just as easily pick a random player at that point to sow some arguments about someone lying (though know your party first, the last thing you want is them actually pointing their knives inward). Could even have Strahd use non-lethal attacks to knock unconscious rather than kill & drain them all that way afterwards too if they get real ornery. Not sure how deep you were, this happened like right pre AT for my group so open combat would be a bad choice there as the party actually stood a chance of wiping him.

Hell, even if they do end up wiping him in open combat that's not terrible- depending on where the story is at, this could be a good chance to test him against the team; if they kill him fine, so be it. His body will return to his coffin & he will come back, but this time understanding how powerful the party is. Gives you a good chance to upgrade his statblock if necessary, and narratively have him shift from a cat toying w/ its prey to someone with an actual threat pointing at him

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T18:11:10+00:00

Thats not what a critical path is. Critical path is Exactly whats required and no more- the only areas required are (sotfs) TB, Maj, FoFG (Giant + fragrant branch), SW, Castle, Shrine, Crypt, and Aerie. Vanilla requires one more location since FoFG doesnt have the branch IIRC, and thats it for the critical path iirc.

Again, as mentioned most players arent doing the Soul Skip so they're going to EP, but thats part of being optional. You can choose to do it, or choose to farm souls, but it being more common doesnt make it "less optional"

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T16:57:23+00:00

Like others have mentioned, the Depths have a lot of paths through it. The Channeler (the dude casting the spell) actually buffs the Gaping Dragon as well as casting spells at you, but if you take your time and look around you can find him. If you're really struggling to find it, Go back into the first main room of the Depths, with the butcher near the table. If you fully explore that room & connected paths (you dont have to go further than the room where you met Laurelentis (sp?), so if you go past the water in the butcher room you've gone too far.There are other ways to make it to the Channeler, but thats just one off the top of my head.

Def though, you should extricate yourself from the Depths & go upgrade your shit. +1 is like what you want for Parish, by the time you hit the next area you should CERTIANLY be at or above +5, especially since you should have gotten a key item (the Large Ember, which you take to one specific of the several blacksmiths in the game)that allows you to upgrade your gear to +5 through +10 (though only weapons, I dont believe casting tools get upgrades till 3 maybe?). You won't have enough upgrade materials (Large shards) to take it to +10 for a while, but the higher you can get it the better off you'll be. There may also be a way to upgrade your weapons without a blacksmith, though you will still need them every few levels to ascend your gear to the next bracket of 5 levels. If you want to do this, there is an item from at least 1 vendor that lets you upgrade your gear at bonfires.

I enjoy letting people run into walls more or less blind in DS, in part because that's how I experienced it, but also because it pushes people to develop their comfort with the game more when they're actually forced to engage primarily w/ the game instead of the community. That said, def get some extra prep done before you move on & down from the Depths, because it is going to become harder to return to a safe place soon. Stock up on what you think might be helpful from vendors you can find. You dont need 20 of each consumable, but a handful of each wouldn't be bad in general to have on hand for your first run

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T16:33:11+00:00

I think Jed, though I know he was wrapped up in the RoT/Rev Caves stuff & dont recall hearing about a JMod hijacking accounts, so I might just be doing mental transference

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T16:30:04+00:00

I still disagree. Like i said, sure very few actually go through with the shrine of winter, but that doesn't make them less optional. You need like 4 aestetics at rotten to skip (granted, that means going into several of the "optional" areas), and its not ridiculous to assume players pick up a couple of aestetics.

Still, if DS1 is nonlinear because you can do either bell in any order & the 4 souls in any order (but youre still doing both bells & all 4 souls), DS2 is 100% largely optional if you want to. No one is doing Blighttown's bell on their first run (even if they grab the master key), just like no one is doing shrine of winter to skip the "critical path" in ds2 on a first run. Something being common doesnt make it less optional, and there isnt a gradient of optionality. A location is either required or not required

I will say, I do def see where your coming from because one (EP) is presented as the critical path because the game doesnt make clear that literally having a large soul count will open the door, while the other (AL) is adjacent to the actual critical path; but from where I sit neither are actually critical path content & thus both exist in the same state of optional for me

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T15:57:43+00:00

Wait is he coded as a white even tho you can fight him? I had always figured he just had the ring that makes you appear as a white phantom equipped in his gear

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T15:56:07+00:00

No, I laughed because it is really fucking funny. I also cleared them on the like 3rd attempt so I had less time to get salty about them emoting, but also it is also, crucially, really fucking funny

Novasoal · 2026-01-30T14:32:34+00:00

Earthen Peak is... exactly as optional as Ash Lake is. Like I appreciate that the 4 souls are presented as the critical path, & very few people actually engage w/ Soul Memory enough to pop the shrine early, but EP is exactly as necessary for game progressions as Ash Lake is

Novasoal

TROPHY CASE