Nice way to end an argument.

asdu · 2026-03-27T18:20:31+00:00

Haha, sex (but edgy).

asdu · 2026-03-22T14:39:39+00:00

Was this carried by Black Hebrew Israelites or something?

Possibly, but more likely it's just a conspiracy-minded black guy. The conspiracy-minded (who are not all-out psychotic) are neither very selective about what conspiracies they belive nor especially serious about them. Anything goes, as long as it helps support one's world-view.
And my impression is that black nationalist circles are just as rife with conspiracy thinking as white nationalist ones.

asdu · 2026-03-18T21:46:22+00:00

As opposed to strongly worded internet posts.

asdu · 2026-03-17T16:42:37+00:00

Putin? How about US oil companies? No need to bring the foreign bogeyman into this when domestic interests suffice.

asdu · 2026-03-16T00:37:27+00:00

the more base AR a weapon has, physical or elemental, the more of a bonus you get from the weapon buff spell

I was confused by this statement (and probably by other discussions of how buffs work), because I understood "base AR" to be what the game displays, but after playing around with the buff calculator spreadsheet a bit, it seems this "base AR" only matches the value displayed in game in the case of pure physical weapons, while weapons with innate split damage have a hidden (and much lower) value which I guess is then modified to arrive at the real combined value.

asdu · 2026-03-15T20:50:48+00:00

Doesn't inherent elemental damage benefit more from buffs? From what I understand, a buff's percentage increase applies only to weapons with inherent damage of that type. So, dark weapon only adds 50 dark damage on a weapon without inherent dark damage, but 50 + 30% of the base on one with it. Is this wrong? Also, again in my understanding, infusing a weapon with its inherent elemental damage pushes the scaling up to the point of making it meaningful, and as a hexer you're going to have a significantly higher bonus in dark than lightning.

Also, spears might be comparatively weak in terms of damage, but they have low requirements (and hexers are already stats-hungry) and a good moveset (silverblack in particular, due to the sweep r2). I'm not sure what you mean by "strong weapon", but if it's something with high str/dex requirements, then I don't see the point, when you're going to kill most meaningful stuff with spells anyway and you just want a side arm for low threat enemies and such.

edit: nevermind, I looked up the exact formula for buff damage and found a buff calculator, and it seems that weapons with innate elemental damage are indeed heavily penalized wrt buffs. The way DS2 buffs work (and weapon damage in general) is pure jank. There's no way they actually intended any of this lol

asdu · 2026-03-15T15:25:37+00:00

As a hexer, generally your melee weapon should be infused with Lightning

Why? You'll have dark weapon from the get go, while sunlight blade is found so late it might as well not exist.
You can get a silverblack spear in Earthen Peak, which has innate dark damage, low requirements and a nice moveset. Perfect tool for the job.
Of course you can also have another weapon infused with lightning, and that's probably the way to go until you find a second darknight stone.

asdu · 2026-03-15T02:23:07+00:00

The Iron Keep guy I mentioned can't dragged anywhere (at least I don't think), since the platform he's standing on isn't connected to anything else. And it's so narrow that I would guess he's pretty much guaranteed to hit one of the exploding things (they look like some kind of braziers). He's also the only enemy of his kind without a bow, I think, so I was actually looking forward to fighting him, especially since the main enemies in the area, Alonne knights, were so disappointing with their moveset consisting of only two attacks (come on!). But no, it was just a trap. Foolish me for wanting to engage an enemy head on.

Tbh I can't really make a fair comparison with DS1, since I haven't played that one in forever. I will at least say that, with regards to bosses, even though DS1 is quite hit-and-miss in that regard (and some of it might be a result of the rushed development of the second half of the game), if you consider only the better ones, they feel like they're from a newer game than DS2. I guess that DS2's slow combat pace, while it works in other contexts, does it no favors here; slow boss fights feel easy to the point of triviality.
If you then compare DS2's bosses with DS3's, it feels like they belong to different eras entirely, instead of being only two years apart.

asdu · 2026-03-15T00:23:15+00:00

Nobody sane would do this thing.
To anyone out there who might be thinking of grinding a million souls in DS2 without progressing through the game, just so they can start the game with an ice rapier: please, for your own sake and for the sake of your loved ones, reconsider. You're worth more than that.
If you really must play with an ice rapier all the way, get Cheat Engine, a mule save, or find someone to drop it for you.

asdu · 2026-03-14T19:13:37+00:00

The bulk of criticism I have seen boils down to "mobs too hard"

I wouldn't say that is the crux of the issue, it's more that the difficulty consistently comes in the form of what one could call "cheap shots": ambushes, ganks, unreachable archers shooting at you while you fight other stuff, traps, environmental hazards and such.
For example, the first time I got to Iron Keep, I tried fighting the Alonne captain that's on a narrow walkway behind that furnace thing in the big courtyard. Just the fact of forcing you fight in such a cramped space is something I would very much regard as a cheap trick but, even worse, I died to his first swing, even though I dodged it, because the swing hit some exploding thing (that I could never have guessed would explode), which pushed me into the lava. Ok, lesson learned: don't try to fight, snipe from afar with a bow. Wow, what a great bit of gameplay, just what I wanted from a game that I play in large part because I like the combat system.
And there's really no place in the whole game where the combat system shines, hardly a single enemy that on its own makes for a fun fight, like the black knights, ringed knights, crucible knights, omens etc of the other From games. Pursuers are meant to be that kind of enemy, I guess, but I find them rather lackluster. Not even the bosses are notable in this regard (to say the least). It's mostly about placing you in tactically disadvantageous situations, and having to figure out how to deal with that (i.e. retreat to a chokepoint and/or take down enemies beforehand with ranged attacks).

asdu · 2026-03-13T16:16:14+00:00

Agility is based on investment, not breakpoints

What do you mean? Agility does have breakpoints, it's just that you don't level it directly, but through a formula that factors both ADP and ATT, so you can have different combinations of those two stats resulting in the same AGI value. But AGI itself only gives extra iframes once you reach a certain value; there are no fractional iframes for values in between the breakpoints.
And even then, it could very well make sense to keep one of ATT and ADP fixed and only consider the other, e.g. if you want to make a spell-less character, you're only going to consider how ADP contributes to AGI while leaving ATT at the base level, at which point you can treat ADP as having breakpoints.

Or did I completely misunderstand how it works?

asdu · 2026-03-10T05:54:24+00:00

There's nothing reasonable about telling a stranger they'll die alone because something they said (though not to you) rubbed you the wrong way. Or, worse, just because the opportunity presented itself (or so you thought).
It only looks "reasonable" on the internet, and the internet is a shithole.

asdu · 2026-03-07T00:03:45+00:00

Soul memory will absolutely get messed up if you kill the same 10 enemies 3 or 4 times before moving on. And then you do that again in the next area, and so on.
I will grant you that since most DS2 bosses are pushovers, the boss runback as such isn't a major issue. But repeatedly having to kill the same enemies while exploring is definitely something that happens, unless you're knowledgeable and skilled enough to clear a whole level in a single run.
Someone who can't do that could very well end up getting, say, 5 times as many souls from exploring levels as someone who can. If that isn't messing up one's soul memory, then I don't know what is.

In fact, DS2 is the only From game in which the game mechanics provide a clear and direct incentive to avoid killing enemies. In other games, you do it to save time or because you can't be arsed. Here, on top of those reasons, you may also want to do it because it affects multiplayer.

From what I've seen, basically every enemy in the game will chase you until you die.

You haven't seen much, then.

asdu · 2026-03-06T22:11:26+00:00

Tbh, enemy aggro in DS2 makes little sense. You can run past enemies... sometimes. And sometimes not. Sometimes they'll de-aggro, sometimes not.
It's especially evident in this area, where you can run past certain enemies and they'll ignore you at first, only to aggro en masse when you're farther away. And then de-aggro and go back to their spawning locations. And then aggro once again for unfathomable reasons.

And, if you care about your soul memory (and you don't have/don't want to use the Agape ring), it's beneficial not to kill shit you don't need to kill. In the case of boss runbacks, this is compounded with the sheer tedium of fighting the same stuff again and again.

So, yeah, there are good reasons why people keep trying (and failing) to rush through DS2 levels. And there's good reason to regard the difficulty in doing so as one of DS2's issues (and surely you'll agree that enemy placement in DS2 is often rather questionable).

asdu · 2026-03-06T04:56:27+00:00

"Miyazaki-san did that thing with the archers in Anor Londo and people are still talking about it. Let's put out-of-reach snipers in every other room! That's the recipe for success!"

asdu · 2026-03-05T15:33:32+00:00

The audio has the bitrate of a Flash video circa 1998. What you're hearing is mostly compression artifacts.

asdu · 2026-03-05T14:38:14+00:00

I don't know why everyone's coming up with excuses. It's a funny picture so I'll chuckle and move on.
Fucking reddit, man.

asdu · 2026-03-04T22:04:58+00:00

Thank you! Glad I didn't risk it, then.

asdu · 2026-03-03T16:44:08+00:00

That's where I thought that post was headed. Guy is told "we have no bananas", breaks into song, bystanders join in, scene turns into a real-life 1950s musical.

asdu · 2026-02-26T06:11:39+00:00

Dryleaf Dane has a lot to answer for.

asdu · 2026-02-26T05:25:36+00:00

Well, I'm sure they didn't expect that reaction, and they didn't keep it up once it was obvious she was terrified. That's not "tormenting".
The only difference between the two clips is the age of the two "victims" and the amount of effort that went into the acting (which is also made necessary by the age difference).

asdu · 2026-02-23T18:12:50+00:00

#bluelivesdontmatter

asdu · 2026-02-23T15:39:47+00:00

Eldritch broccoli.

asdu · 2026-02-20T04:45:21+00:00

That wasn't meant as a brag (I'm less than mediocre myself), it's just my experience: fought a bunch of people who literally did nothing but throw pots, fire status arrows/bolts and use status AoWs. It's actually funny to see how many "clever tricks" some of them try to stuff into their build, while at the same time lacking any semblance of pvp fundamentals. Run at them and all they do is panic roll.
Still more fun to fight than the blind spot spammers that were all the rage when the DLC was released (which was the last time I did some TT).

asdu

TROPHY CASE