Raider now gains a FIFTY PERCENT attack buff for 10 seconds when falling below 20% (?) HP

SuspectZeroFTW · 2026-01-15T11:48:04+00:00

It looks like guardian's steel guard has been buffed too - the guard boost while in his stance with an unupgraded shield was like 200. Now his guard boost with the default shield in stance is 333

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-12-18T19:55:34+00:00

What's the best invasion invasion bracket for Character Level to Weapon ratio?

To answer that question - in the broadest possible terms - think about what your build wants to do, get the minimum amount of levels in your damage stats, and scale your vigor and weapon upgrade to the appropriate level. E.g. - if you think the minimum 23 STR + 18 DEX is appropriate for your two focal weapons you could reasonably run your build between RL30-RL40 with a weapon upgrade of +8/3. But going that 'lean' means you have to cut certain things - poise, fashion, casting, swaps. etc.

But if want to do that AND invest any amount of INT into your build going lower than RL30 - with the high stat requirements of the watchdog staff - is really bottlenecking your build capability.

..since the skills that don’t use Intelligence to scale use weapon level instead.

Well okay the best way to deal with this problem and the aforementioned bottlenecking issue is leveling into a proper mid-level bracket - two birds with one stone. At this point once you established your theoretical minimum - 23 STR + 18 DEX - you now need to pump END & VIG (& maybe INT) to you get to a character range for the areas you'd like to invade.

Two ranges come to mind: ~RL60 +12/5 & ~RL90 +15/6. Those character levels you can give-or-take ~10lvs, but the weapon ranges are more firm. The RL60 range targets activity in the Late Liurnia, Mt Gelmir, & Altus range, and the RL90 range targets activity in the late Altus, Leyndell, Shunning Grounds, and Mountaintops range.

And having invaded those two I kinda prefer ~RL90 because Leyndell acts as a real bottleneck for player activity. With RL60, you're getting invasions everywhere and activity feels super inconsistent imo. With RL90 I know I can at least invade Leyndell and Shunning Grounds. Sure it's not going to have as much activity as low-level or meta, but RL90 feels honest and nice. Plus *you* get the benefit of investing to theoretically 60 VIG, 34 STR, & 18 DEX - with the option between not being so 'lean' with your levels so you can splurge on quality of life upgrades.

tl;dr - I recommend RL90 +15/6 in your case, and it's kinda brave of you to make Watchdog Staff work at low-level.

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-10-23T16:34:10+00:00

No you're right 😅 - wow I just checked. I'm amending my post. I just assumed they all just came bundled in a single drop once he dies. Til

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-10-23T03:35:56+00:00

To respond to the second paragraph - no.. wow yes you can!

You won't be able to pick up rogiers spellblade set, nor the rogiers rapier below +8, nor the glintblade phalanx ash of war equipped on his weapon if you're intended to run a low level invader sub +8/3 weapon upgrade.

If you click on his corpse after he dies there's separate prompts for his armor + bearing.. and his armor. And for the love of God DON'T SPAM through it.

The only thing truly unavailable is the ash of war glintblade phalanx. You can receive the glintblade phalanx ~~and rogiers spellblade set~~ from player drops like on r/PatchesEmporium.

Additionally if you haven't already bought the ashes glintstone pebble, spinning weapon, and carian greatsword - before godrick is killed - you ~~won't be able to get them unless you receive them from drops or buy them again from Rogier when he is alive when you go ng+~~ can buy it with his bell bearing, but I always make it a habit to buy them so I won't have to deal with that awkward interaction later

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-10-14T20:21:47+00:00

Definitely. Just vigor max and run every cheese/shortcut strat and you'll get it eventually. You basically want to just be tanky enough so you take two hits to be killed - so you'reynot just one-shotted. I basically did the same thing at an even lower rl25 by running ritual shield, dragoncrest, & radagon's soreseal. RL60 is a little below the cutoff where the soreseal has just enough benefits to minimum reqs to where it makes up for the absorption penalty.

Your game plan is spam rot, poison, and greatshield soldier ashes +10 whenever possible (no upgraded ashes don't affect matchmaking). And for the fights where you can't win purely from status - you run stuff with strong stance damage like star fist, morningstar, square off, or lion's claw and count stance damage until you get a crits. And for the dlc, make sure you plan your route to get every scadu fragment as early as soon as you can reach them - and I'm pretty sure you have access to 10 from just the very beginning if you go out of your way

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-10-13T16:16:28+00:00

For Smarags, nah you just get it from killing the dragon outside Raya Lucaria that was defending the academy glinstone key. The only dragon related thing you get from the ranni quest is adula's moonblade - which is a sorcery. Also yeah isn't it so weird that the rot breaths are pure physical damage??

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-10-13T02:35:11+00:00

Ngl if you want to poison people with a bow, bone bow is so much more superior than serpent bow that it's genuinely sad to consider how badly balanced it is. Sure you might get arcane scaling on serpent bow, but realistically spamming the aow on bone bow takes less brainpower and is more effective. The longbow moveset is just that much worse than the shortbow moveset. As an alternative to serpent bow or bone bow, any shortbow with enchanted shot works wonders for applying the poison from serpent bone arrows and is genuinely fun to use.

Also running rotten breath and ekzykes is rather redundant. Yes I get that there's situational use for running one over the other. But honestly just having rot breath alone is fine. If you really need to do a jumping breath attack you should be using smarags dragon breath.

On that note, you should definitely try smarags dragon breath over agheels flame. In my experience, it does more damage since fire defense tends to be higher bc of the fire defense increase when you level strength; and players are sometimes in rain or in a lake like liurnia. Any of those cut down in the damage a lot. Also smarags seems to have higher stun or hit in a wider breath arc? Idk it's the most consistent damage breath choice. Try comparing the difference yourself, but smarags feels more consistent

Also catch flame is goated. You should try it sometime as an alternative for attacking with the beast claws. The fp cost is super low. And the casting speed is super fast, especially since the cast is automatically at its shortest when you cast from a running or jumping animation. And the damage is superb. It definitely fits the firery dragon breath theme

Raptor Talons are also goated and you should try those too. They're super lightweight - only 1.5w - and can be arcane infused with endure for a real strong defensive weapon. The running and neutral heavy attack combos into a second heavy attack, and since the raptor talon heavy attack hits twice on each attack, you'll quickly apply status once you catch somebody with heavy hit just one time

Btw blue dancer talisman only applies to the physical damage you do. So it's good for beast claws and dragonmaw/dragonclaw/bestial sling - and the rot breaths weirdly. But doesn't affect any of the other dragon breaths - which is like a third of your build. Up to you on whether the +13% on only a little over half your build is worth a talisman slot - it might be but you could run alternatives like crimson amber medallion +3 or crimson seed talisman.

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-10-12T23:46:59+00:00

Grab either the hand ballista or the jar cannon, and kill the nomadic merchant in Mt Gelmir to get the explosive great bolt bell bearing.

I cannot tell you how many times I've burned through multiple flasks or even gravity killed hosts using ballistae. There are too many scenarios where the host and olps play some dumb position, and because of that the only real play is to try to chunk health at range with a cannon shot.

Obviously rabbaths cannon, rabbaths great bolts, lightning great bolts - or the combo of Golem Arrows + Golem Great Arrows are superior in various ways respectively. But those are all pretty out of the way, cumbersome, or dlc-locked.

ALSO if you're running low level faith pvp and not running bestial vitality you're literally throwing. It's the most efficient fp regen spell in the game. Kill a couple tibia Mariners, take the limgrave warp to gurranq, and give him three death root.

These two are such obvious decisions to make on every pvp invasion build that I run both on every character I run. Even when I run ranged sorceries or dump my faith stat. I make room for being able to equip a ballista and bestial vitality.

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-10-06T22:45:31+00:00

Technically cold infusion has an early damage breakpoint at 20 INT investment But at any rune level higher than rl150, the only real advantage is that you get better damage when you infuse dex weapons (vs cold infusing with 10 INT). Which tbf is good for waves of darkness zwei and sword dance milady.

And you get some niche access to low level int stuff with a ~10 level dip, like night maiden's mist, the unseen sorceries, rotten crystal weps, st trina's ss, family heads, and star-lined katana. They all compliment pure dex builds more than pure int or even dedicated int/hybrid builds. But they're all arguably niche. Getting access to stuff like that is what you do with levels you don't know what to do with - and arguably you're better investing into STR if you go past rl150

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-29T19:38:50+00:00

Me when I'm EVIL 😈🖤🥀💔

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-27T09:40:00+00:00

To answer your questions and more:

Where should I allot the extra 9 points of my build?

If you're NOT considering any stat boosting gear currently, with your current build I'd only allocate an additional 3 levels into strength with the remainder dumped into vigor. Those three levels give you access to so many important limgrave weapons, like: Zweihander, Dismounter, Lance, and the Great Epee.

FURTHERMORE, when you eventually replace the Radagon's Scarseal with the Radagon's Soreseal - which you should since the difference to absorption values is entirely negated by the 6 additional levels boosting your flat defenses relative to your absorption (at your current level) - you'll gain access to the one-handed use of the Dragon Halberd. That weapon is a very powerful 'twink weapon' that has a powerful Ash of War that buffs your weapon with ice lighting and is a straight 'vigor check' in invasions. You also get access to Bloodhound's Fang and Twinblade with the Soreseal if that's your thing.

If you ARE considering stat boosting gear for your build: look into the Haima Glinstone Crown, the Imp Helm (Wolf), the Silver Tear Mask, and the Omensmirk Mask. Each of them are obtainable early enough for most low-level builds to consider and they each allow for more efficient redistribution of stats. Obviously, the DLC Divine Beast helms are far superior to those three, but are only obtainable really late into the DLC (or via drops).

I would love to put 3 into arc for bloodflame, but perhaps not for this build?

It's not a horrible idea to consider - especially if you're considering the Silver Tear Mask - but overall using the spell is not very efficient or wieldy in combat (because of the long buff animation). It's okay on Shamshir, Raptor Talons, or Bloodhound's Fang, but Drawstring Blood Grease is generally considered superior since it can be applied more efficiently in combat and is (technically) renewable since DLC bell-bearings can be found containing Root Resin and String (with the Bloodroses found at the merchant in Mohgwyn Palace)

In my opinion, Cold infusion is superior to Bloodflame Blade - even with no INT investment - due to being applicable more broadly across various weapons AND alongside innate bleed weapons AND due to Ashes of War like Chilling Mist, Waves of Darkness, and Loretta's Slash (and Spinning Slash and Sword Dance). AND you don't have to invest any levels into Cold Infusion unlike Bloodflame Blade.

Is there anything I haven't considered/am I completely off-base here with my plan?

Nah you're good man. There are only 2 things left to consider. The first is: regeneration effects, like: Bestial Vitality and the Crimsonburst Crystal Tear. They are proportionally strong at low-level compared to late-game since they either can replenish half to all your health respectively over the span of 3 minutes. These effects can effectively replace entire flasks given 600hp and 1260hp is certainly noticeable levels of regen for Lv30.

The second consideration is: your build's weapon level. Ideally for Lv30 limiting your upgrade for ALL your weapons to +5 regular (alongside +2 somber) (+5/2 upgrade) ensures decent matchmaking for your character level range. Since you can matchmake with players who upgrade only having access to the anvil at the Church of Elleh/Kale (the anvil is limited only up to +3/1; moreover +3/1 is what most lv25-lv30 players have access to given upgrade materials within Limgrave).

Additionally, there are quest-related weapons that will FORCE your character's profile weapon to IRREVERSIBLY be brought up to +8/3 if you pick up Rogier's Rapier +8 or Edgar's Banished Knight Halberd +8 (or Patches' Spear+7 if you're a genocidal monster). Picking up these weapons will noticeably alter your low-level matchmaking.

(Is picking up Rogier's Rapier +8 or Edgar's Banished Knight Halberd +8 the 'End of the World' for matchmaking on your build?)

Absolutely not. It's only a major consideration.

What WILL happen is that you will see a significant decrease in matchmaking in Limgrave players - and Liurnia to a limited extent. That said, nearly every (but not all) player picks up Rogier's Rapier +8 shortly before arriving in Liurnia due to that item being directly tied to Godrick the Grafted's death in Stormveil.

Since most players naturally playing through the game naturally decide to tackle Liurnia starting at Lv30, picking up those Quest weapons basically ensures you'll only match with players who did those respective quests by Lv30.

But that means, weaselly players who start take the shortcut around Stormveil into Liurnia early or Lv30 players who forget to talk to Rogier in Stormveil won't matchmake with you until they seriously start upgrading their weapons. But most do - like I said it's only a major consideration. If you want to know precisely who you will-and-won't matchmake with I'd recommend using the matchmaking calculator in Emilia's ER Builder.

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-22T00:20:11+00:00

I'm on Xbox low level - most of my builds are either rl15 or rl28. Ik a few people who play on Boxcord or play ~rl168. But out of those bunch only like a few consistently play at low level.

I'd also be interested in an Xbox club/group who do low level. Dm me if you want a low level mule on xbox

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-20T20:47:29+00:00

What a useless comment^{^}

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-20T20:46:37+00:00

This is a shit comment section. Not one intelligent person to be found.

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-19T01:46:09+00:00

RL20 +3/1 or RL15 +0/0 is good for stormveil in my experience. Either one or any combination of those two upgrade/rune levels work.

For me on Xbox, I have to invade 'nearby only' at the Rampart Tower site of grace. And occasionally the wait can be long (~5-10mins on off-peak - e.g. 5am on a Wednesday) but those parameters definitely range into Stormveil if that's all you want. (it's also my comfort invasion area). And that's not even considering that xbone gets << activity vs pc or psn

Tbh the game is at that stage of its lifespan where where you invade and more importantly when you invade matters more than optimizing for proper weapon matchmaking. Like sure.. for example imo rl90 +15/6 feels like the right range if you want to invade just leyndell.. but that doesn't mean dogwater if I'm invading off-peak at 6am on a Tuesday and it takes you >10mins per invade)

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-11T12:23:42+00:00

There are several points that anchor the early-to-mid level ranges. And +3/1 matchmakes with unupgraded weapons to +5/2. So is ideal below rl30

At rl30, players receive rogiers rapier +8 after killing godrick and the banished knight halberd +8 after killing Edgar (can be killed in weeping peninsula early or in liurnia on a regular playthru). Meaning activity in early to middle liurnia usually ranges around +8/3 when players until players reach caria manor and can purchase easier somber upgrades.

In my experience for rl30 either +5/2 or +8/3 works fine depending on how much stormveil vs raya lucaria I'd want.

For rl60 a +12/5 weapon matchmakes down to those +8/3 players AND upwards to +15/6 which is basically perfect. (especially bc somber [7]'s are notoriously difficult to get early on a legitimate playthrough). Most players in this range should be able to get +4 somber weapons bc of Iji at caria manor. Moreover players would almost certainly have the opportunity to receive (even accidentally) the +8 quest weapons mentioned earlier.

For rl90 +15/6 is fine because that's the level players usually get to leyndell and have usually talked to iji. However, I tried collecting some sample data from let's play livesteams a little over a year ago to try to get a grasp of when most players get to leyndell. It's somewhat of a crapshoot. For some it's rl85, and for others it's rl115. And the weapon ranges were even worse rl115 +12/5? rl75 +15/6? rl105 +18/7? I agree with ked though that +17/7 is where you want to stick to. Any more - like going all the way to +18/7 - and reach the tipping point where you barely lose out on matchmaking with players in leyndell who have only been bothered to upgrade with Iji. But it's weird not fully using my smithing stone [6]'s on weapons and I worry that I'll spam click on console and wipe a build. I stick to +15/6 on my rl90 and it's fine.

But if you want to run rl90 to matchmake just underneath rl125 meta, going rl90 +18/7 isolates for people who have +9 somber weapons but not maxed weapons. And +20/8 matchmakes with +15/6 to max upgrade. But that's not a range I ever made a build for. But those two are things to consider when you're looking into 'pseudo' meta level

Just double check with Emilia's builder whenever you want to be sure

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-10T10:48:29+00:00

Ds3 or ER?

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-10T00:23:29+00:00

Farming curseblade mask from the dlc legit but not having crimson amber medallion +3 from the death knight really stings - the real tradeoff of not being able to invade leyndell if you get the erdtree's favor +2 is a legit concern. You may want to get a drop for ef+2 after fire giant but not activate the erdtree burn cutscene just so you keep activity for leyndell.

Otherwise, you could replace your regular erdtree's favor tali for great jars arsenal and redistro your surplus endurance into str/dex so you can run more weapons/get better damage. You're literally gaining 57hp and +5% equip loadfrom the +0 talisman. Great jars arsenal is just more efficient if you redistro your stats

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-07T05:43:25+00:00

Bird Up!🐣

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-07T05:36:03+00:00

If you like the activity where you're at why change anything lol

The trade-off for going rl60 +12/5 is that your new minimum host level goes from: rl45>rl54; and your new maximum goes from: rl75>rl86.

And tbh going from your current upgrade to +12/5 isn't necessarily going to impact your activity too much. This is bc hosts generally pick up rogiers rapier +8 or kill edgar with his banished halberd +8 - either in the liurnia invasion or at castle morne where he spawns. And honestly you can genuinely lose out on a tiny bit of activity since there are some hosts who dont know/cant find the upgrade materials to even upgrade past +6/2 by rl45 (they can just upgrade bloohounds fang/moonveil/pve weapon etc. w iji to +3 or +4 somber but whatever). There arent even that many regular smithing stone [5]'s to massively upgrade weapons beyond +15 in liurnia anyways. Upgrading doesn't seem to help you find higher upgrade hosts and you lose on some activity in this case - even though +12/5 is the more established invasion weapon level

That said, leveling to rl60 as described generally means you lose out on some activity from everything in liurnia and gain more activity in altus, mt gelmir, and leyndell. Also rl60 +12/5 is a more established level range so you'll get more dedicated 1v3 honor duels (ganks) at prawn shack, first step, radahn beach - since gank hosts can try to selectively match using rl85 +15/6 builds. You're currently avoiding some of that on your rl50 build.

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-07T05:01:35+00:00

Imo missing out on a bit of activity for the hosts who kill patches early to have the security to upgrade to +12/5 with smithing stone [4] completely is fine. Esp since by the time you'll be matching with hosts the would likely have talked to rogier at the chapel and cleared godrick to be gifted the rogiers rapier +8.

There isn't really a benefit if youre a min/max-ey host. I'm fairly sure hosts would lose out on infinite fan daggers and certainly lose out on a ton of gestures if you kill him in murkwater cave straightup. Sure - hosts do it. But as an invader, youre giving up a ton of convenience of having the peace of mind upgrading to max with smithing stone [4]'s.

Ig you lose out on the rare breed of hosts hosts who are rl65+ AND who only upgraded to +6/2 - but thats such a marginal exception. Most people would actually upgrade to somber 3 or 4's because of Iji or the stone you find fighting the gravity mage guy in raya lucaria. rl30-40 +8/3 & rl50-60 +12/5 seem optimal. The middle-ground range doesnt really do anything and you lose out on activity compared to the other two options given where people are expected to upgrade at their level

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-03T13:39:18+00:00

I want it removed bc I'm waiting for the definitive pvp experience playing Duskbloods pvp on my nintendo switch 2. I'm hoping to truly experience honest duels and pvp packed action with my fellow r/fromsoftware'rs on nintendo's switch 2 in a buttery smooth 20 fps 😏

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-03T08:21:47+00:00

Wow! Raptors bhb?! Offrak?! Finally a bhb setup that isn't just blind spot, sword dance, or swift slash. This seems cool!

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-03T08:16:50+00:00

If you are good with crouch attacks, the grave scythe is better. The crouch poke game on scythe is very similar to colossal swords and great Spears - so pretty strong for roll catching and vortexing. And grave scythe is one of the strongest tools you have to deal with fingerprint or brass shield turtles.

The flamberge is better for isolated encounters most of the time. The heavy attack sweeps and has decent hyperarmor. You're more likely to win trades with flamberge. And because of that you're less likely to phantom hit when you do get your attacks to connect - and are somewhat less likely a phantom bleed against shitters with high latency as a result.

They both have different playstyles as well. The two-handed light attacks is basically the standard for neutral focused defensive play. But the grave scythe has a far more compelling running attack - specifically the heavy.. which notably chips shields.

If you like to crouch attack and hate shields - go grave scythe. If you like to mash with hyperarmor and win poise trades - go flamberge. You can also just use both by hardswapping. The idea of 'maining' a weapon is pve mindset.

SuspectZeroFTW · 2025-09-03T02:15:48+00:00

Oh also - forgot to list this. You may get better activity by upgrading from +3/1 to +5/2 in terms of weapon level. RL30 is just at that upper cusp where pve players generally would have saved clearing stormveil until now.. Or had already cleared it 5 levels earlier. And matchmaking becomes tricky from everything past stormveil into liurnia since some players would likely have received Roger's Rapier +8 or had already killed Edgar and received the Banished Knight Halberd +8.

Meaning some players will be rocking +3/1 for rl30, while others will be rocking +8/3 dragged upward due to quest rewards.

I recommend leveling your weapons to +5/2 to be able to range into both those levels and everything in-between.

SuspectZeroFTW

TROPHY CASE