What Are You Playing (Fall 2013)?

[Darmonde]

No, it's not explained anywhere at all. You have the World Tendency status screen which means jack shit when you have no idea what any of it means.

I went back to the game a few days ago, and looks like I'll finally be finishing it soon. I've been trying to not use a walkthrough, but I know there's tons of missables, and I think I'm almost done with the game, so I just did some light reading. Holy shit. You need a goddamn PhD to comprehend this Tendency crap. I don't like having my hand held, but plopping a system as convoluted as this into your game and giving the player ZERO guidance is Kawazu-lame. Are they trying to sell strategy guides or something?

Also, what's up with upgrading your weapons? I met two blacksmiths, but neither works with anything but Hardstone and Faintstone. I have tons of other materials. Who uses them? Ugh, I don't want to look up stuff like this. Feels like cheating.

Whatevs, guess I just won't go for any extra trophies. I really like it otherwise, but I'm not studying a Wiki like a college course in order to get the platinum. I'll just move on to Dark Souls after the first playthrough here.

You 100% need to read a guide for the game to understand it. It's not like understanding the system lessens the skills involved for the gameplay (unless you're exploiting some spells) so you're not ruining the experience much by reading about it.

For the weapons, there are very specific points in weapon upgrade paths that you can change the weapons, which will need a different material. For example, upgrade long sword until its +6 then you get the option to forge it into a moon long sword or something. You sometimes just find special weapons lying around also (already changed versions, or unique ones). Again, faq basically required to make sense of it.

The trophies in the game are really stupid, probably because no one knew how to make good achievements yet. So those should be ignored unless you're just stubborn. And if so, there is a way to dupe materials (cheat nasty) that I would recommend.

I think the game is fantastic, and I'm sure it was great for people who love to grind. People probably enjoyed figuring out the system by playing up to new game +10, but I didn't think that would really enhance my enjoyment of the game.

[Compass]

moon long sword or something.

Moonlight Sword. It's from King's Field!

Thanks. I would not have guessed about the weapon upgrading.

Finished this tonight. Really liked it, but usually in spite of its difficulty rather than because of it. I don't think it would have suffered much being a little easier. At the same time it was mighty satisfying to kill the bosses. I never used a walkthrough, but I sure as shit read those messages! They almost balance out the game's bouts of cheapness.

The hub's music, Maiden in Black, and general atmosphere is sublime. I don't know if there's some trick to killing the blue flying dragon. I sat there firing arrows at it for a while and I guess I could have eventually killed it, but damn that's boring. Ended up not being able to upgrade any of my weapons to max. Came really close on a few. Don't want to grind for hours hoping for large chunks to drop, though. If I do New Game+ at some point maybe I can get most of the remaining materials from crystal lizards...

Cool game dripping in atmosphere. FROM was always good at that. Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition - PS3 (UK) is on its way in the mail.

[Pineapple]

Good on you for beating it Compass! Just for future playthrough reference (because you WILL do it again!):

Blacksmith Ed (found in Stonefang Tunnel, 2-1) is the one who will do your upgrading past the basic path. The first weapon I picked up that was already started down an upgrade path was the Crushing Battle Axe (in 2-1) and the Greystone needed for it is easily farmed from the rock worms in 2-2. If you want to make boss weapons (ie using boss souls to make weapons, needed for trophy) you have to bring him the Flamelurker's soul (boss of 2-2). To finish any upgrade path you're going to need a Pure stone of whatever kind, and obviously those are harder to come by. Some can only be had through doing certain NPC sidequests that come from having certain world tendencies. The Pure Greystone needed for my Crushing Battle Axe +5 was obtained from Skirvir the Wanderer who appears in 2-2 when world 2 has pure white tendency, for example.

As far as world tendency goes, if you're playing the game in online mode, wheather you're revived or a phantom, the server you're playing on will dictate some of the world tendencies. If you want more control, you gotta put it in offline mode. When you're a phantom, you can die as much as you want without changing anything. If you die in a level in human form, that lowers the tendency of the world by one step (6 steps from pure black to pure white). To raise the tendency back up one level, kill a boss or help/save an NPC. Using this and world 1 as an example, if you go through and kill the Phalanx, Tower Knight and the Red Dragon you will be at pure white and thus the iron door at the beginning of the bridge is open, allowing you to get to a crystal lizard, some heavy ass armor, and Executioner Miralda. Also if you didn't kill the Red Dragon and still got to pure white, the dragon will not be guarding his normal spot at the dragon roost, allowing you to get the items unimpeded. In pure white, you get more healing items from enemies, do more damage, and probably something else that I can't remember.

I just did Flamelurker and Dragon God the other night, and was able to get the Dragon Bone Smasher for the first time since I was actually paying attention to world tendency. I can't use it effectively yet, but damn it looks cool anyways

Edit: Forgot to mention about dying in human form: if you're going to do it, do it on purpose in the Nexus, where your tendency will not be affected. You revive automatically when you touch the archstone of a boss you just killed, so when you get back into the Nexus, just run up the second flight of stairs and jump off.

[sleeve]

I'm playing Assassin's Creed III. It's my next step in playing through my entire 360 backlog.

I'm in the middle of Sequence 6, just did some of the tea party missions.

I'm enjoying it despite it being ENORMOUSLY buggy. Like, "holy shit, this is embarrassingly shambolic for a AAA title" buggy. I thought people on the internets were just overreacting as usual...but nah. It really is that bad.

In spite of all that I still like it quite a bit. All the prior Assassin's Creed bored the shit out of me. Well to be more exact, the first one bored the shit out of me and then I never tried the other ones until III hit. The combat interface is actually okay; I just wish it was possible to switch weapons faster, MGS style. I only wish there were more challenging AI opponents.

The hunting and the freerunning and the "low profile assassinations" are tops. I also really like the exhaustive attention to historical detail.

[MechDeus]

AC2 is heaps better than AC1 and then it's incremental steps. You shouldn't judge the rest by that one.

[Rumpy]

Brotherhood is/was great.

[Compass]

Good on you for beating it Compass! Just for future playthrough reference (because you WILL do it again!):

Blacksmith Ed (found in Stonefang Tunnel, 2-1) is the one who will do your upgrading past the basic path. The first weapon I picked up that was already started down an upgrade path was the Crushing Battle Axe (in 2-1) and the Greystone needed for it is easily farmed from the rock worms in 2-2. If you want to make boss weapons (ie using boss souls to make weapons, needed for trophy) you have to bring him the Flamelurker's soul (boss of 2-2). To finish any upgrade path you're going to need a Pure stone of whatever kind, and obviously those are harder to come by. Some can only be had through doing certain NPC sidequests that come from having certain world tendencies. The Pure Greystone needed for my Crushing Battle Axe +5 was obtained from Skirvir the Wanderer who appears in 2-2 when world 2 has pure white tendency, for example.

As far as world tendency goes, if you're playing the game in online mode, wheather you're revived or a phantom, the server you're playing on will dictate some of the world tendencies. If you want more control, you gotta put it in offline mode. When you're a phantom, you can die as much as you want without changing anything. If you die in a level in human form, that lowers the tendency of the world by one step (6 steps from pure black to pure white). To raise the tendency back up one level, kill a boss or help/save an NPC. Using this and world 1 as an example, if you go through and kill the Phalanx, Tower Knight and the Red Dragon you will be at pure white and thus the iron door at the beginning of the bridge is open, allowing you to get to a crystal lizard, some heavy ass armor, and Executioner Miralda. Also if you didn't kill the Red Dragon and still got to pure white, the dragon will not be guarding his normal spot at the dragon roost, allowing you to get the items unimpeded. In pure white, you get more healing items from enemies, do more damage, and probably something else that I can't remember.

I just did Flamelurker and Dragon God the other night, and was able to get the Dragon Bone Smasher for the first time since I was actually paying attention to world tendency. I can't use it effectively yet, but damn it looks cool anyways

Edit: Forgot to mention about dying in human form: if you're going to do it, do it on purpose in the Nexus, where your tendency will not be affected. You revive automatically when you touch the archstone of a boss you just killed, so when you get back into the Nexus, just run up the second flight of stairs and jump off.

Thanks for all the info. I am kind of itching to go back for a bit already. Not sure I'll do a whole 'nother run, but I want to at least see some of the characters I missed. Now that I've beaten I'll be less shy about looking up info.

One thing I forgot to mention is what a trip it is near the end to just be blazing through levels like they're nothing -- the same levels I was inching forward in, step by step, in pure terror ten or twenty hours ago. Part of it is having increased stats of course, but a lot of it is just knowing the level, enemies, and surprises inside out at that point.