Nothing. The problem is it's behind that wall at all. That extremely specific wall.

To put things in perspective: if you don't know to go to the Iron Keep (or how to get there), you could wind up going there late in the game, like I did. I probably spent a good 10-15 hours stuck using a Falchion because I didn't like rapiers and because the Iron Keep is stuck down such a specific path.

Compare that to strength builds. They have to...talk to Melentia or Lenigrast and buy a club or a mace, and then they're good for the rest of the game.

E: And rapiers are annoying as fuck to use, but that's just personal preference (unlike the Falchion or the Scimitar, which are both just bad.)

 

Sorry, but curved swords can be pretty good. Only big weakness is the lack of horizontal attacks.

Not saying that a katana shouldn't be available earlier or elsewhere. As a matter of fact, the selection of dex to strength weapons early in the game is pretty bad(arguably in general, as well). Granted, I haven't used those specific curved swords, but looking at the stats they should do work.

Bottom line is equipment placement could be a lot better than it is.

 

I didn't play around with scimitars much (didn't care for the moveset), but I had a lot of experience with a Falchion. Fuck the Falchion, it's a complete piece of shit. At this point I'd offhand it as a parry weapon and never, ever attack with it.

Still, even if they fixed weapon placements, that doesn't fix the fact that bleed is worthless and that Dex scaling is really bad. You're better off getting the minimum requirements and infusing it with lightning more often than not.

 

Solomon, I understand what you're saying, that dex build cant become powerful for a long-ish time. But I still think its easy to get to that midgame point.

 

My first character was a Dex build. It wasn't as easy as you think. Granted a good half of that was definitely me not being used to the new mechanics.

Dex is actually pretty weak right now, even in the endgame. It takes a while to get passable.

E: As a side note, having vigor is pretty important. I just went through the Earthen Peak as my Magic/etc. Weapon build, and man did I get fucked up all over the place due to my low (<10) Vigor. Now that I can attune Dark Weapon it should balance out, though.

This build is pretty fun so far! I need to get better at parrying, but it's surprisingly viable overall. An upgraded club with Dark Weapon twoshots regular Alonne Knights. I figure I'll probably try to get a Dark Club +10 so I have something until I work on grinding out Blue Flames for the endgame.

Or maybe I could just buy a couple Mace of the Insolent and cast Dark Weapon on them...

 

I haven't played around with dex weapons much yet. But from the little I have used the scaling seems to be f'ed comparative to strength.

Possibly that's why early game dex is so terrible.

 

Unfortunately, that's because it is. Dex scales at a dramatically lower rate than Str does. It's made worse by the fact that (because of slash resist, mostly) strike is by far the best damage type PvE and Dex doesn't get any good strike options.

E: Old Iron King is such a joke of a fight, it's kinda hilarious. If you don't kill yourself by rolling into lava (or letting yourself get punched into a hole), you pretty much can't lose.

 

I died the first three times as a caster on Old Iron King. First: Rolled into lava. Second: Controller disconnected, died. Third: I had no idea his laser went through walls, proceeded to instantly die to one beam.

 

If there's one thing I utterly hate about this game, it's the RNG for the chance an enemy NPC might drop a piece of his gear that I want. Special mention goes to the Mad Warrior in Belfry Sol, because they decided random chance for one part of his gear wasn't enough, so they added random spawns as well.

 

At least you don't need to use Bonfire Ascetics for his set. Apparently for some sets (like the Catarina set) you're likely to completely max out the area's difficulty setting long before actually picking up the full set, and that sounds fucking ridiculous.

 

True, but one time when the servers weren't working (PC here) and I had to play offline, I went and killed the Guardian Dragon six times, respawned with the courtesy of Bonfire Ascetics, so I could get that one Dragon scale that's located just after you kill the GD, before you go upstairs to the Dragon Eyrie.

Also, I grew bored with the empty Belfry Sol, so I BA'd that area too, 3 times so far.

By the end of things, I spent over 4 hours for 2 pieces, his chest and helmet.

 

I would like to introduce you to copious amounts of farming in Dark Souls II! Courtesy of the Monster Hunter mentality brought by the new director!

You can get 1337 gears and show off how fashionable you are! All you need to do is spend hours upon hours killing the same monster over and over again.

But wait, that's not all. The 1337est gear comes from monsters that only spawn once! So pop all those bonefire ascetics and fight your way through waves of tough enemies to get one shot at getting that cool new hat you wanted! And remember, some of those hats have full sets to go with them, courtesy of that same enemy you just killed. So go get'em, tiger.


Or you can just use a cheat engine. That works too.

But seriously, fuck farming in all of its forms in every game ever made ever.

PS: And don't forget to use cheesy tactics, like abusing saves and game quits to get multiple attempts at the same enemy. It's not a true video game if you can't abuse the mechanics to get around annoying game decisions.

 

Yeah, I don't know why they changed that. The old system of "every red phantom drops something" worked pretty well considering how rare/difficult they were.

 

How does that work for armor/weapons exactly?

 

@Fishy Justice

You're overreacting. There are some things like that put in the game for people who enjoy that sort of thing, but it is in no way required to beat the game or have good, or even great, gear. Either for PvP or PvE.

Honestly, the hyperbole is strong with that post.

 

I ran over an area 16 times to get a certain item drop. I had all the item find gear, and it didn't happen. You can say it was part of the game design, but I say it is piss.

DS1 only had a few rare things that required any grinding, DS2 has a lot more than that.

There is a really useful script for CE. Any item you pickup, you get what you set what you pickup instead of what was dropped. You just need to go in offline Steam and off the DS2 servers and one is fine.

 

I did a bunch of arena dueling earlier so I could do my duty as a Dickwraith, and oh god it's so grindy. Especially when lag makes fights fucking impossible due to ridiculous phantom range.

Fuck you From.

 

My first character had lots in trouble in the arena, but my second character who uses Faith is doing really well. Very fun doing 50%-90% of someones hp with a great lightning spear.

 

If you can fucking hit them. Way too easy to dodge those.

 

You can hit it surprisingly often if you practice using it without lock on, especially at medium to close range. Also NG+ is pretty damn difficult. That room in Iron Keep in the middle of the furnace has 2 red phantom Alonne Captains. I just ran in and got cut to pieces, it was so brutal. And since I killed a bunch of npcs before going to ng+ I have tons of sin, meaning I get constantly invaded by Arbiter Spirits. Too hard.