LP Update/Comment Thread

[IskatuMesk]

You have to turn the furnace on while testing, then he just left it on because he said nothing was wrong with it.

[mark_009_vn]

Kay...

[IskatuMesk]

Second furnace guy says nothing's wrong.

Says he's spent 8 years cleaning up after these guys (the initial company).

Says that company is probably east indian.

ALWAYS INDIA, ALWAYS

[nu1x]

Playing Dark Souls parallel to you, I expect to see a lot of hilarity, especially in some areas (Blighttown). I also see how this LP could be the longest yet, because even though there are speedruns of it in 1h20m range, to beat all the bosses (if you do not metagame) you need enourmous amounts of time (for example, I play as of now for ~126 hours and am without spoiling much at a optional Painting World of Ariamis). But I overgrind, craft like mad, and basically punch titanite out of slugs for 5-6 hours at a time.

A semi-reasonable request from my part would be, even if you are playing blindly, at least check out some hints just to be sure that you don't skip massive secret areas. Also, don't skimp on buying 999 wooden arrows and shooting at drakes for half an hour and such, I really enjoy such retarded endeavours

I have watched all of your LPs, quite an achievement. Keep up the good work, and don't let the casuals ruin your day too much :3

P.S.: SKELETOOOOOOONSSSSSSSS ARRRRRGHRRBLGHRRRGH

[nu1x]

Also, I've been listening to Starsworn p2 where you talk about Poise, thing is, Endurance and Poise in DS are so overpowered that you basically need to invest heavily in both, BUT, due to the availability of certain armor later in the game (if you find it), you can get past last Poise breakpoint without wearing Wolf ring, which is basically bollocks (as in you get one more free ring slot, and rings are build-changing in this game, they are so powerful).

My current char has Poise past last breakpoint AND encumbrance just less than 50%.

This also has a certain min-maxing aspect in that if I invest a lot of time tweaking my equipment, the gameplay itself gets very measurably easier (as in, being able to facetank Big Boss more of the time WHILE dealing uninterrupted damage). I don't think it's a bad thing, but that may be more of my roots being heavily in JRPG turn-based combat thinking. I adore inv. management Some people loathe it tho.

Also, it is quite hard to do a god-character in DS in a first blind run who is melee (esp. if you want int and faith for util spells like I did), no matter how much you grind levels, because leveling is so slow and has diminishing returns after some point (I am lv 71 at 128 hours of playtime).

Overall I consider this game superior in design to Demon Souls, and I tend to notice positives more than negatives, but it may be that this game was made just for people like me.

The game could use fewer skeletons though.

[IskatuMesk]

I'm playing offline and the only hints I'm getting are asking the emu where the DLC content is (since it can really easily be missed on your first playthrough). I don't know what my time is right now, but I highly doubt I'll be approaching even 70-80 hours upon entire completion unless I have enormously underestimated the level of content after the lordvessel or unless I get super super lost again (most of my time is wasted being lost).

Dark Souls is a pretty easy game overall. I guess it's because I am battlehardened from Demon's Souls, but in most instances I die it's due to A.) being incredibly stupid or B.) cheap garbage.

I am like level 75 or something at around... I think maybe 50-60 hours of time (I have not actually checked my time yet), and I have only grinded for about maybe 1-2 hours maximum across the entire run. And I've wasted hundreds of thousands of souls dying. However, as I discovered, Regular damage weapons are horribly overpowered and after a few times trying to diverge away from them I found myself very restricted in upgrade paths and I really don't grind anything crafting-wise.

So far, I consider the game to be many steps ahead of Demon's Souls, but it's a far cry from a releasable product. Its AI is still just as busted, there's enormous issues in the level design everywhere you look, and insane amounts of bugs and unfinishedness.

As for retarded shit, there is no shortage of that, I guarantee. Two words - Anor Londo.

/edit

I have encountered a potentially serious problem, but it answers a yet unanswered question.

My mic is sometimes losing power. All throughout today I've been having trouble getting Vent to have a stable audio connection. I thought it was vent being buggy, but then I ran some tests and Audition was losing the mic, too. Then I noticed the mic's light was going off.

It's losing power.

Harkening back to the days of Alice: Madness Returns, losing mic power caused immense damage to the game by crashing fraps and losing tons of casting data. Sound familiar? Yes, the unexplained fraps crashes in Dark Souls were potentially caused by the mic losing power.

Recordings will not continue until I get to the bottom of this, hopefully without getting to the bottom of my wallet in the process.

/edit 2

I am 69% sure it's the cord

/edit 3

I have replaced the cord with a stubby rod and we'll see how tony flys for a while. If all is :3 I'll be back to recording soon-ish. If the game really will take me 130 hours, it won't be done in december lol.

[Mr.]

If the game really will take me 130 hours, it won't be done in december lol.

Based on what you've told me about your progress, it definitely won't be that long.

[nu1x]

Ahaha yes, the first two dragonbow knights defy rational explanation. Also the general theme of running on the thin roofs, it is just horrible and makes the first area of Anor Londo inaccessible to non-visual oriented people like me (I had to look it up online). Also, I recommend using the black eye when the game tells you to, leads to the most ridiculously cheap and overpowered boss I've seen in some time.

I'm playing offline, the majority of time lost comes from the fact that I have multiple +10 weapons / +5 magics / divine, multiple +n armors etc. That consumed a ton of souls away from levels.

One thing as to easily missed content tho - in the first area, there is a jumping on the roofs requirements to reach certain semi hidden shinies, which lead you later to semi-secret content. Also, absolutelly missable stuff in Blighttown.

Also, I've wasted tons of time after the Catacombs kindling all bonfires to +20, is all I can say. So yeah, if you're already past Anor Londo, the game is almost at the end, depending of course how close to 100% you want to make it. (And your ability to take down the end bosses).

[IskatuMesk]

That guy with the black eye was actually definitely one of the easier encounters. The actual boss of Anor Londo gave me a lot more trouble than most of the game.

Why are you kindling all of the catacombs? lol

To be honest I don't think I have kindled a bonfire more than once in the entire game. But now that firelink shrine gives like 20 flasks which is just downright dirty overpowered.

[IskatuMesk]

Dark Souls recordings are complete and AFAIK i found all major optional/DLC bosses and such, though I am sure I missed hidden items and things. But, overall, this is pretty complete. I had the Emu tell me about the more secret hidden stuff since I was sure to miss it otherwise, so hopefully this compensates for missing the Artorias fight due to the fraps crashes.

Overall an estimated 60-65 hours or so. I am already very far into verification so it shouldn't take too long for me to wrap this production up.

Windows BSOD the second I set down the controller, and motioninjoy was constantly giving me problems today, but I avoided any further corruption of files and I narrowly missed losing the final portions of the game by about 2 seconds.

[nu1x]

Congratulations ! As I progress through the game I'll compare completed parts with your LP, will be fun :D

Thanks.

[Pr0nogo]

Can't wait to have a look.

[IskatuMesk]

At this stage, uploads will probably take more time than the remaining verification of Dark Souls. However, I have fallen behind on my planned December developer release and I don't have enough material to warrant a release any time soon. I will therefore likely hold off releasing this content until I have assembled a more complete set, as the individual episodes are meaningless without greater context. This may yet change, but I am extremely burned out on video work and just want to focus on stuff that matters.

As soon as I have cleared E of data I will try to do a low-level format on it using the SeaTools to try to correct the bad sector errors. If this is unsuccessful I am not sure if I can trust that drive with LP recordings anymore, which will seriously hurt future projects.

/edit

The unstable sector count is increasing and I still have to get some Darksiders 2 video and the last bits of Dark Souls off of it. It's a race against the cock.

/e 2

Dark Souls verification finished. Other than muxing the micro segments and uploading everything this production is finished and I'll think about starting Heavenly Sword soon.

/e 3

FTP gave me some error about inaccessible device when I was asleep but apparently the files are still transferring without issue. wut?

Attempts to fix the recording drive have all failed thus far.

/e 4

The Low Level Format seems to have fixed the errors. I will monitor this drive and need to perform tests to see how it goes.

If it proves to be unreliable, e.g. the errors reappear, I will acquire an enterprise 4tb drive to replace it.

[IskatuMesk]

Dark Souls is now available!

I am not 100% that all of the uploads went through properly. I was running my low level encode on the drive and I think it made the FTP freak out one time, and I also had internet outages during uploads. I resumed several uploads, but I don't know if they are 100% functional as a result.

So if you run into reproducable problems in MPC with these videos let me know and I'll see if I can figure out what broke.

I'm going to pass out; I'll polish up the review when I wake up and post it.

[nu1x]

Thanks !

I already know what I'm doing this weekend :P