For the people struggling with getting a Symbol of Avarice, there is a way to get one guaranteed per playthrough. Using Lloyd's Talismans (or Hunter Charms, whatever they're called now) on a mimic will cause them to give up their reward without becoming hostile. Throw charm, loot mimic, hit mimic once, throw charm, check if he dropped Avarice, hit again, throw another charm, repeat ad infinitum. Just stock up on charms from the Handmaiden and then use them on the same mimic until he drops one.

Quote from: Flee on May 03, 2016, 06:05:56 PM

He can still be a bit of pain on low DPS challenge runs.

Spoiler

Oh, good point. I once let him live for more than 30 seconds and the clone lasers almost killed me.

Quote

For those wondering:

Spoiler

Pinwheel is skippable by quitting out during the loading screen after getting to Nito for the Gravelord covenant. If done correctly, you'll spawn at the Tomb of the Giants rather than back in the Catacombs.

Spoiler

Do you still get the rite of kindling? I don't think I've ever used it for anything besides satisfying curiosity anyway, so if no I wouldn't really be missing anything.

Quote from: Flee on May 03, 2016, 05:53:06 PM

Quote from: HollowedTurkey on May 03, 2016, 05:41:57 PM

Quote from: Flee on May 03, 2016, 05:37:41 PM

Quote from: HollowedTurkey on May 03, 2016, 02:47:26 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on May 03, 2016, 02:18:48 PM

Quote from: HollowedTurkey on May 03, 2016, 02:04:27 PM

Actually, if you (or somebody) could just give me a list of every boss in the game--or just the ones that are necessary to beat the game--just to give me a sense of progression, that could be helpful.

Unless you feel like it could be too spoiler-y, like if a boss's name has plot significance for a twist or... something.

* = optional

After the first third of the game you can tackle each area in any order you want, with a couple exceptions.

There's a lot more optional bosses than just those, btw.

Those are all the bosses in the base game, with a couple mini-bosses thrown in. There aren't any other actual bosses.

I mean that your assessment of what bosses are optional or not is a bit off. Taurus, Capra, Gaping Dragon, Ceaseless, Firesage and Centipede are all entirely optional and legitimately skippable. Pinwheel is too, but he requires a bug to avoid so I'm not including him.

I'm surprised the souls community still considers Pinwheel a boss five years later.

He can still be a bit of pain on low DPS challenge runs.

For those wondering:

Quote from: Flee on May 03, 2016, 05:37:41 PM

Quote from: HollowedTurkey on May 03, 2016, 02:47:26 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on May 03, 2016, 02:18:48 PM

Quote from: HollowedTurkey on May 03, 2016, 02:04:27 PM

Actually, if you (or somebody) could just give me a list of every boss in the game--or just the ones that are necessary to beat the game--just to give me a sense of progression, that could be helpful.

Unless you feel like it could be too spoiler-y, like if a boss's name has plot significance for a twist or... something.

* = optional

After the first third of the game you can tackle each area in any order you want, with a couple exceptions.

There's a lot more optional bosses than just those, btw.

Those are all the bosses in the base game, with a couple mini-bosses thrown in. There aren't any other actual bosses.

I mean that your assessment of what bosses are optional or not is a bit off. Taurus, Capra, Gaping Dragon, Ceaseless, Firesage and Centipede are all entirely optional and legitimately skippable. Pinwheel is too, but he requires a bug to avoid so I'm not including him.

>1950
>It should be noted here that that the authors concluded that it had "still to be demonstrated" if the F-scale actually did, in fact, measure fascist receptivity at a personality level

Lol. Scored a 2.03.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iztSqpIb3hA

Stream will probably already be over by the time most see this, but this is pretty fucked. As always, Dark Souls PVP on PC is messed up from the very start. Some guy hacked the game and created a dagger that gives anyone it hits a ton of souls. Thing is, it gives them so much souls that the game considers it cheating and soft bans the person on the receiving end. So this guy is just going around invading and summoning random people to get their accounts soft banned on Steam.

PC master race.

Yeah, I don't remember seeing a Fire Keeper at the shrine. If you talk to her and she says something like, "Bring me Fire Keeper Souls," then all is (mostly) forgiven. I still don't think you should even be able to consume it in the first place, unless you're NG+.

I'm glad this doesn't mark the end of the playthrough, though. I got a couple of kindled bonfires out of it, so whatever.

I believe you get a prompt saying "give Fire Keeper Soul to reinforce Estus Flask" or something when talking to her, regardless of whether you have any in your inventory or not. It's what stopped me from using mine when I found it.

It was then that I spotted this, off in the distance:

Hmm...

It really is amazing how many things you can spot by paying close attention and knowing where to look. A video I told you to bookmark ages ago shows how much you can see from just Firelink and the Burg. Same thing with the elevator shortcut back to Firelink, stuff like that really shows how nicely the world ties together.

He was telling me that I should just start over. Make a completely new character and just start over, because the game is going to be exponentially more difficult for me now. I'm not going to, unless you guys think I should. I refuse to believe that the game is going to be impossible now because I missed out on a single boost. That would piss me off even more, to be honest, because that's just all the more reason not to allow first-timers to consume it right away.

It's not at all necessary. You'll find several more throughout the game and the lack of one estus boost really does not matter that much. The difference between having 7 of them or just 6 is 50hp when you sip it. Near the end of the game, you're probably going to be sitting at (close to or even over) 1000hp, so that extra 5% of health you restore when using the flask is really just negligible. You haven't exactly made it easier for yourself, but there's two more to be found in the relatively foreseeable future. Don't worry about it too much.

And I agree that this is something the game could do better. The no hand holding and obscure progress kind of deal can be great but also fuck you over at the same time. Some things, especially NPC side quest lines, can be really hard to follow and very easy to miss. There's always NG+ I suppose. In the game's defense though, you could've known not to consume it. I'm not entirely sure if you did, but you might not have explored Firelink enough when you first got there. A Fire Keeper is waiting there and gives you the option to boost your flask in exchange for Fire Keeper Souls. I realize that doesn't matter much and agree that the description could be more clear, but you normally find the first Keeper before the first Keeper Soul.

So yeah, sucks that you consumed the Soul but it's ultimately no big deal. It's absolutely not necessary to beat the game and not having it doesn't make it substantially more difficult. All you missed out on is a bit of extra HP restored every time you sip the flask, and there's going to be numerous other Keeper Souls to make up for that later. Besides, an extra kindled bonfire is always nice. It's highly possible that your first big challenge awaits behind that foggy veil, hypothetically speaking of course, so those extra 5 heals might come in handy more than just 5 slightly bigger healsl.

As for the white veil, I'm not fucking with it right now. I noticed a summon sign, so that probably means trouble. I'll deal with it later--I still need 20,000 souls to collect first before I start taking dumb risks. I have ~7000 at this point.

Don't forget your itemised souls. Depending on how many you've found, consuming them will probably land you several thousand easy souls.

Anyone else think that Fallen Knight is amazing fashion?

Quote from: Flee on April 29, 2016, 07:39:50 AM

Quote from: Saint Endies on April 28, 2016, 09:01:14 PM

I think I once saw a reply on here to these sort of issues that was along the lines of "wait until they are older, then teach them about the pro's and con's, then let them decide".

Most would agree that this is generally a good approach. The only decent argument against making it illegal is that it will drive the procedure underground where it will be performed in clandestine and less safe circumstances.

Maybe if there was some sort of big effort or whatever to get more people to know the cons then more people would stop doing it?

I mean, forcefully circumcising baby's isn't going to go away, especially for males, because of religious reasons.

Yeah, the practice is likely to ultimately disappear on its own, although it will likely take a few more years or decades. A big problem is the amount of misinformation out there, so education is definitely the way forward. This article talks about it pretty well. I mean, when you see that people like Verb are still under the impression that, in his own words, uncut penises "voluminously produce pus", it immediately becomes very obvious how ignorance on the subject fuels this tradition.

Either way, circumcision rates have been declining in the US for years and the more research is done on the issue, the more it becomes clear that there's no sound reasons to continue doing it. One of the biggest problems in the US is how much of an interest doctors have in supporting the practice. There have been some pretty astounding documentaries and research on the topic and it really clears a lot of things up. The AAP, which is the last official medical organization in the world claiming the benefits outweigh the downsides, receives a lot of its funding from pharmaceuticals and cosmetic businesses. For those who don't know, cut foreskins are a big deal in cosmetics and are often used in all sorts of skin creams. The AAP has every reason to claim it's a great thing as they make a ton of money by supporting it. But even worse than the AAP are the doctors themselves. Circumcision in the US is no longer covered by most health insurances as it's considered an entirely cosmetic surgery. Parents who want it done have to pay hospitals and doctors directly for their services, which is something that can cost a few hundred dollars. There are doctors making 6 figures doing nothing but performing circumcisions. The business in the US alone is estimated to bring in a few millions of dollars for those promoting and performing them every year.

So when you take that into consideration, it becomes a lot more obvious why this is such a common practice in the US still. "Surely, you want it to be cleaner, healthier, less infected and better in general, right? At the low low price of $200, we can arrange that for you. The fact that what I just said is bogus and that literally the entire developed world save for this one country condemns the practice is obviously not something I will share with you, because I can make a lot of money convincing you that you're better off doing this to your child and capitalizing of your ignorance."

But yeah, more research and better education will ultimately reduce the practice by a ton. It'll just take some time in some parts where the authorities have such a vested and financial interest in promoting it while the rest of the world keeps bringing more and more medical research to the table that supports not doing it.

It's still frustrating how insanely strong straight swords and estocs are, but damn. Two shotting some random scrub with my black knight great axe is awesome.

Quote from: Flee on April 29, 2016, 07:23:52 AM

Russia / Eastern Europe and the US are very strong in the only competitive game that really matters, which is of course Quake.

Russian kids are trash though.

At Quake? Evil, Agent, Cooller, Ash and Pavel are all top tier. Then there's Belarus, which has Cypher (GOAT) and Clawz. The US is great as well with their star player Rapha.

As for the giant stone knights and the ice golems... They can wait.

I'm both glad and disappointed that you didn't get far enough to see what really lurks down there. Having them wait a bit is probably not a bad idea.

For example--since I was heading backwards, this gave me ample opportunity to teach myself how to backstab, since a lot of the enemies were facing the other direction. I've also begun to employ the shield-kick in my little gameplan. Initialy, I thought it was utterly useless--but after accidentally using it a bunch of times, I've gleaned it's function as a way to drain your opponent's stamina, which is actually very useful. I've also gotten better at rolling, backdashing, reading my opponent's movements, and even parrying. I'm getting good.

Most importantly, I'm beginning to block a lot more effectivel

You make me proud, Verb.

Not to mention--though the Morning Star was indeed doing more damage than the Winged Spear would have, it still wasn't doing a whole lot. It wasn't until I eventually upgraded to a Morning Star+2 that I was dealing ~30 damage per standard hit, ~80 per strong hit--which finally proved to be too much for him.

Yeah, this is deliberate. The differences between weapons are not that big early on but increase by a lot once you upgrade them more. For example, the difference between a +1 winged spear and +1 mace on a certain enemy won't be as big as it would be trying to use a +10 winged spear and +10 mace on the same type of knight near the end of the game. It encourages experimentation early on and manifests in more different playstyles later in the game.

Also, I haven't talked about this very much, but I'm really beginning to see why everyone praises the map design so much.

You're about to come upon one of the best aspects of that. It made my jaw drop when unlocking a certain shortcut in the area you're at now and realizing where it ended up and how nicely everything ties together.

This is one of them illusory walls I've been hearing about.

The best thing about them is that most of them can be discovered by paying close attention. For example, if you would have stood near the edge of the drop in front of the wall and angled your camera a bit, you can peer around the corner and see the bonfire behind it. Others will have slightly different shades, show up at very obvious places or have some sort of marking that sets them apart from other parts of the environment. Constantly thinking about your surroundings will help a lot, as I've found illusory walls myself by just going "wait a minute, shouldn't there be another room between here and the outside wall due to what I know about the layout of the building?". It's good shit.

Keep at it.

Numerous studies have found a strong correlation between gun ownership and paranoia, poor impulse control and anger or confidence issues. Despite having a gun in the house statistically speaking being much more likely to cause harm to you or your family and being a strong risk factor for many cases of violence than it is to be used effectively in self defense scenarios, it's still one the most common justifications for gun ownership in the US.

I'm sure many people are responsible enough to own one safely and have good reasons for it, but I think that for a very large portion of gun owners it's rooted in something a lot less positive and safe than that.

Buy Quake Live, man.