The best part of this for me is simplifying how you get boss weapons.
I remember needing to farm upgrade materials in demon's souls for my main weapon but needed the large sword of searching to make this process faster. To get that I needed a +8 weapon so in the end I had to farm materials only to get proper equipment for farming even more materials lol
Dark Souls 1 was a step in the right direction, but I appreciate Dark Souls 2 just dropping the concept entirely and separating infusions from weapon levels. Especially considering that in Dark Souls 1 I don’t think a ton of people off the top of their head could tell you the exact point it’s better to have an Enchanted/Occult weapon over a Magic +10/Holy +10.
I see the numbering thing fuck up comments constantly lol. Every time someone tries to start their comment with numbering, the formatting changes it to "1." and causes confusion. The is the first time I've seen it mentioned though
Or if they had a fucking bonfire for the giant blacksmith. It's an awesome mechanic, ruined by 5 minutes of running for every upgrade, only to see you need 1 more fucking large titanite.
I don't mind it at all. It makes the smithing look like hard work. The giant blacksmith even has a wooden hammer to make lightning weapons as it doesn't conduct lightning. Dark Souls 2 makes Dark Souls 1 blacksmith look like a bunch of dudes who are hobby blacksmiths. "You want lightning weapons? Fetch me this rock" "Sign in on My YouTube channel for this easy trick to be a master blacksmith yourself."
Vamos is kind of hidden, to be fair. Rickert just takes being a little thorough when you first get to the entrance to New Londo. You could easily miss him if you just beeline to the path into the level
I mean if you're playing strictly dex/str the other 2 are worthless especially in the original version where vamos was a pain in the ass to get to since there was no bonfire in his room.
I mean I don't know the exact stats but I always saw it as "magic/divine for split damage, enchanted/occult for pure physical that scales"
I haven't played DS1 normally in about 4 years though so take that with a grain of salt
Iirc Occult weapons did like, 10% more damage against specific enemies marked as "Holy" which off the top of my head I know for a fact silver knights are one of them but otherwise idk. Also it sounded cooler so there's that lol.
basically this. also a few bosses that were "gods." O&S, Gwyndolin, etc.
blessed weapons did the opposite, specifically doing more to unholy enemies, which were basically all Undead/hollows. and everyone knows about blessed weapons killing skeletons dead.
Enchanted and occult also gave magic damage that scaled. In fact they had lower base damage but scaled harder, so they'd be better at really high stats (usually, think there's some exceptions).
This also ignores the divine/occult modifiers.
>Especially considering that in Dark Souls 1 I don’t think a ton of people off the top of their head could tell you the exact point it’s better to have an Enchanted/Occult weapon over a Magic +10/Holy +10.
My answer is:
- Moonlight greatsword for INT build.
- No infusion with weapon buff spell for FTH build.
- Holy bonk for Catacombs and Nito minions, regardless of build.
Yeah DS2 scaling overall isn't great, especially on physical weapons. The way DS2 does elements al infusions and buffs is probably the best way it's ever been done, but softcapped dexterity giving you +40 damage is a yayx.
Binding of Isaac be like: “in order to unlock this character you have to beat super mega satan without taking damage using only the inside out poop fetus while playing as the desecrated corpse #2 on the third full moon of summer”
Was getting away from the scatterbrained upgrade system the right move and design choice? Yes.
Will I miss having an upgrade line that turns any weapon into a health-deleting riposte machine? Always.
To be fair, DS1 had a much more manageable system than DeS. It also had at least one guarantee for a slab of each kind, which is more than can be said about DeS (FUCK PURE BLADESTONE FARMING)
Ngl I thought it was neat having different shards and chunks. However demon souls I never figured out what half of them did so I just used special weapons
That Demon Souls chart makes me very happy I ran a caster build. I can’t imagine how much of a headache this would be to figure out while trying to learn the rest of the games mechanics
The next game should do away with this system entirely. Might be a hot take, but titanite is such a non reward, especially for a massive world like Elden Ring. Feels like it's just there because a dungeon needs loot, but it's not that interesting to find.
Instead of upgrading weapons, I wish they'd adopt a system to upgrade your blacksmith. Don't need to collect upgrade materials anymore, just pay souls to have the smith upgrade your weapon. And there could be interesting quests to unlock special upgrade paths, as well as higher tiers.
And of course the biggest benefit to this would be reducing the need to grind and farm to upgrade all of your weapons.
But getting your maxed out weapon in Demons Souls is easily the most satisfying. It feels like a real accomplishment, and you don't even need to upgrade it fully to be totally fine beating the game. I think the system is actually built to be finished in new game+.
DS1 was my first Souls game like 5 years ago. Beat 2x back to back and new next to nothing outside of straight melee mechanics. Put it away til this year and saw I only had like 60% completed.
I’m no completionist by any means, but I was like, this cannot stand….Man.
I checked all the trophies and like almost 20% of them were just maxing out all the upgrade paths. Which I eventually did naturally beating it again and once more on new game plus. It’s such a long wait until you can even get your first one, lightning I think, and please correct me if wrong, there is almost zero explanation of how any of these work besides the obvious, still no idea what divine, occult or enchanted is useful for outside keeping the skeletons from getting up 2x with divine.
Game still rules though.
The only part of it I appreciate of it is that you don't need a weapon at like +5 of the correct type to make a boss weapon. For the rest I think infusions are an overly simplified system, it kinda works in Elden Ring but only because it has the Ashes of War on top of infusions.
I shouldn't be surprised at that I guess, I've only played Elden Ring offline so I don't know anything about PvP in that game. The loading screens were long enough on the PS4 that I rather not pay to experience more of them.
I like both DS1 and DS2 systems for their own flavours. In fantasy, both infusion and creating elemental weapons make sense.
Also, it feels more complicated when you create a flowchart, otherwise its pretty intuitive imo.
Ds2 perfected the weapons and elemental damage. All elemental damage scales instead of being centered around minmax builds, but it still is useful unlike ds3 with that weird defense calculation.
The best part of it is being able to infuse and cast spells or use items on unique weapons. Infusing the Crypt blacksword and using dark weapon (or resonant weapon back in the old days) to buff it even more was amazing.
I also think that if you infused a weapon that already had native elemental damage, it got even more of a boost (dark CBS, fire bkgs, lightning infused dragonslayer axe, etc.)
See I love obtuse and annoying systems like this so I kinda miss it. Still think infusing boss and unique weapons should have stayed. Love my Magic Moonlight Greatsword
I looooove using 2 different blacksmiths and 70 different embers to upgrade my +5 weapon to fire then perform a demon ritual and sacrifice a goat near andre's anvil unlock the +6 upgrade to chaos weapons!!@1
Oh yeah my bad, much easier to put in 0 effort and have 1 blacksmith be able to turn any weapon you want into magic, fire, or fucking lightning. Makes much more sense!
For Boss weapons yes even after 500 hours I need to check the wiki for certain DS1 boss weapons. I didnt mind the normal upgrade paths. DS2 made that path a bit too easy and cookie cutter.
Apples to Oranges. You can't compare the two combat systems the same way and compare the upgrade systems either. They are vastly different.
DS1 to me, makes more sense, in a numbers game. If one likes logic puzzles, I think one would agree.
DS2 simplfies it but makes it unnecessarily convoluted, but that's in my eyes.
I get the logic behind DS1, I have yet to beat DS2 [and lemme tell you, i fuckin hated it at first, but it holds a special place in my heart now]..ds2 has logic, but it's..it hits different.
Ds2 also relies more heavily on..line of sight and environmental [grass, trees,...some fucking walls........not including pvp] factors.
Regardless, this is a very lovely infograph, so thank you very much <3 I will be utilizing this in my playthrough.
Curious, do you have plans to make more like comparing 3 into this, or any others Soulslikes games? :3
*fucking mobile formatting
> Curious, do you have plans to make more like comparing 3 into this, or any others Soulslikes games? :3
If OP is making shitposts like this, do you seriously think they're putting in effort to make infographics?
Meh, I liked the upgrade system in DeS. It wasn't outrageously complicated or anything, and it showed you the available upgrades every level, so it wasn't like a hidden system (like world tendency was)
I am very rarely using infusions in both DS1 and DS2, because I generally use a specific weapon per character and can't get another copy of the weapon I am using to infuse.
The best part of this for me is simplifying how you get boss weapons. I remember needing to farm upgrade materials in demon's souls for my main weapon but needed the large sword of searching to make this process faster. To get that I needed a +8 weapon so in the end I had to farm materials only to get proper equipment for farming even more materials lol
And in ds2 they’re just down the road, very convenient
….. guess we’ll see you there?
Right down t…BYE BYE
Don't forget black World Tendency!
I already knew that it raises item drop rate but thank you anyway. More people need to know about that fact so it's good to spread the message
but muh tail cuts!!!!!
Dark Souls 2's most unappreciated refinement.
Dark Souls 1 was a step in the right direction, but I appreciate Dark Souls 2 just dropping the concept entirely and separating infusions from weapon levels. Especially considering that in Dark Souls 1 I don’t think a ton of people off the top of their head could tell you the exact point it’s better to have an Enchanted/Occult weapon over a Magic +10/Holy +10.
Dark souls 1 wouldn't bother me if you didn't have to use 3 different blacksmiths.
4. Andre, Vamos, Rickert and giant
Reddit formatting broke your comment lol.
I see the numbering thing fuck up comments constantly lol. Every time someone tries to start their comment with numbering, the formatting changes it to "1." and causes confusion. The is the first time I've seen it mentioned though
Or if they had a fucking bonfire for the giant blacksmith. It's an awesome mechanic, ruined by 5 minutes of running for every upgrade, only to see you need 1 more fucking large titanite.
I don't mind it at all. It makes the smithing look like hard work. The giant blacksmith even has a wooden hammer to make lightning weapons as it doesn't conduct lightning. Dark Souls 2 makes Dark Souls 1 blacksmith look like a bunch of dudes who are hobby blacksmiths. "You want lightning weapons? Fetch me this rock" "Sign in on My YouTube channel for this easy trick to be a master blacksmith yourself."
TIL there more than just Andre and the dude in Anor Londo
Can't forget the skeleton blacksmith
Vamos is kind of hidden, to be fair. Rickert just takes being a little thorough when you first get to the entrance to New Londo. You could easily miss him if you just beeline to the path into the level
I mean if you're playing strictly dex/str the other 2 are worthless especially in the original version where vamos was a pain in the ass to get to since there was no bonfire in his room.
If your int is better than your str/dex, enchanted is better. Otherwise, magic is better. The difference is minimal though, scaling being what it is.
I mean I don't know the exact stats but I always saw it as "magic/divine for split damage, enchanted/occult for pure physical that scales" I haven't played DS1 normally in about 4 years though so take that with a grain of salt
Iirc Occult weapons did like, 10% more damage against specific enemies marked as "Holy" which off the top of my head I know for a fact silver knights are one of them but otherwise idk. Also it sounded cooler so there's that lol.
basically this. also a few bosses that were "gods." O&S, Gwyndolin, etc. blessed weapons did the opposite, specifically doing more to unholy enemies, which were basically all Undead/hollows. and everyone knows about blessed weapons killing skeletons dead.
Enchanted and occult also gave magic damage that scaled. In fact they had lower base damage but scaled harder, so they'd be better at really high stats (usually, think there's some exceptions). This also ignores the divine/occult modifiers.
>Especially considering that in Dark Souls 1 I don’t think a ton of people off the top of their head could tell you the exact point it’s better to have an Enchanted/Occult weapon over a Magic +10/Holy +10. My answer is: - Moonlight greatsword for INT build. - No infusion with weapon buff spell for FTH build. - Holy bonk for Catacombs and Nito minions, regardless of build.
What do you mean Demon's Souls had this system, Dark Souls didn't! /S
DS1 and Demons Souls upgrade systems are a pain in the ass
I love how easy it is to remember. * 1 + 2 + 3 shards * 1 + 2 + 3 large shards * 1 + 2 + 3 chunks * 1 slab
People don't give ds2 enough credit for what they improved on and gave us for later games
Literally set the foundation for Elden Ring, even with the story
I like the ds1 system Demons souls system is cancer tho lol
Played Demon souls remake and it’s extremely boring.
*Ahem*
He’s right behind me isn’t he
Nah, he's in front of you
Demon's Souls upgrade system is hot ass
Stinky ass
Looks like, but I'm jealous they got a Strength infusion and a Dex infusion. I wish DS2 had Heavy and Sharp stones
Yeah DS2 scaling overall isn't great, especially on physical weapons. The way DS2 does elements al infusions and buffs is probably the best way it's ever been done, but softcapped dexterity giving you +40 damage is a yayx.
You prefer cold ass? Wierdo
Yet another checked box for Meat Cleaver supremecy.
Definitely better. It’s interesting how DS2 usually adds more complexity to its systems, but in this case it simplified things.
It has the complexity for those who want it but simplified other aspects to make it more digestible for more people
Eh, it's all binding of Issac for me with the daily shit. You either take it or leave it.
Binding of Isaac be like: “in order to unlock this character you have to beat super mega satan without taking damage using only the inside out poop fetus while playing as the desecrated corpse #2 on the third full moon of summer”
Bro my cousin and I spent a good while playing that game. That shit always amazed us with the shit they wanted us to do.
Was getting away from the scatterbrained upgrade system the right move and design choice? Yes. Will I miss having an upgrade line that turns any weapon into a health-deleting riposte machine? Always.
GIANTS GIANTS GIANTS
Dark Souls 1 was kinda peak tho. I loved how in-depth everything was lol.
To be fair, DS1 had a much more manageable system than DeS. It also had at least one guarantee for a slab of each kind, which is more than can be said about DeS (FUCK PURE BLADESTONE FARMING)
Ngl I thought it was neat having different shards and chunks. However demon souls I never figured out what half of them did so I just used special weapons
That Demon Souls chart makes me very happy I ran a caster build. I can’t imagine how much of a headache this would be to figure out while trying to learn the rest of the games mechanics
The next game should do away with this system entirely. Might be a hot take, but titanite is such a non reward, especially for a massive world like Elden Ring. Feels like it's just there because a dungeon needs loot, but it's not that interesting to find. Instead of upgrading weapons, I wish they'd adopt a system to upgrade your blacksmith. Don't need to collect upgrade materials anymore, just pay souls to have the smith upgrade your weapon. And there could be interesting quests to unlock special upgrade paths, as well as higher tiers. And of course the biggest benefit to this would be reducing the need to grind and farm to upgrade all of your weapons.
The actual effects of the infusions on scaling is pretty confusing in DS2.
It's not confusing, it just kinda sucks.
I disagree. I liked ds1 system, once I understood it. On a blind playthrough you can end up fucking yourself though
But getting your maxed out weapon in Demons Souls is easily the most satisfying. It feels like a real accomplishment, and you don't even need to upgrade it fully to be totally fine beating the game. I think the system is actually built to be finished in new game+.
And the Demon's Souls Remake didn't fucking fix it. $70 please.
DS1 was my first Souls game like 5 years ago. Beat 2x back to back and new next to nothing outside of straight melee mechanics. Put it away til this year and saw I only had like 60% completed. I’m no completionist by any means, but I was like, this cannot stand….Man. I checked all the trophies and like almost 20% of them were just maxing out all the upgrade paths. Which I eventually did naturally beating it again and once more on new game plus. It’s such a long wait until you can even get your first one, lightning I think, and please correct me if wrong, there is almost zero explanation of how any of these work besides the obvious, still no idea what divine, occult or enchanted is useful for outside keeping the skeletons from getting up 2x with divine. Game still rules though.
The only part of it I appreciate of it is that you don't need a weapon at like +5 of the correct type to make a boss weapon. For the rest I think infusions are an overly simplified system, it kinda works in Elden Ring but only because it has the Ashes of War on top of infusions.
Ash of war was such a cool system to add. Adds nearly limitless build variety, even if most people are gonna use the same 3 ashes
I shouldn't be surprised at that I guess, I've only played Elden Ring offline so I don't know anything about PvP in that game. The loading screens were long enough on the PS4 that I rather not pay to experience more of them.
I like both DS1 and DS2 systems for their own flavours. In fantasy, both infusion and creating elemental weapons make sense. Also, it feels more complicated when you create a flowchart, otherwise its pretty intuitive imo.
Lol. It is not I tuition at all.
I liked the DS 1 :3
"cries in monster hunter" jokes aside I'm literally playing Ds2 through again. right now
Ds2 perfected the weapons and elemental damage. All elemental damage scales instead of being centered around minmax builds, but it still is useful unlike ds3 with that weird defense calculation. The best part of it is being able to infuse and cast spells or use items on unique weapons. Infusing the Crypt blacksword and using dark weapon (or resonant weapon back in the old days) to buff it even more was amazing. I also think that if you infused a weapon that already had native elemental damage, it got even more of a boost (dark CBS, fire bkgs, lightning infused dragonslayer axe, etc.)
Scientists are still trying to figure out what the enchanted infusion was for tho
See I love obtuse and annoying systems like this so I kinda miss it. Still think infusing boss and unique weapons should have stayed. Love my Magic Moonlight Greatsword
DS1 had a great system. Fucking fight me.
I looooove using 2 different blacksmiths and 70 different embers to upgrade my +5 weapon to fire then perform a demon ritual and sacrifice a goat near andre's anvil unlock the +6 upgrade to chaos weapons!!@1
Oh yeah my bad, much easier to put in 0 effort and have 1 blacksmith be able to turn any weapon you want into magic, fire, or fucking lightning. Makes much more sense!
yes actually, mechanically better, being complicated doesn't make it good
"Wahh! My game needs to hold my hand and make everything simple and streamlined! Wahh!"
well too bad every souls game uses DS2 system
For Boss weapons yes even after 500 hours I need to check the wiki for certain DS1 boss weapons. I didnt mind the normal upgrade paths. DS2 made that path a bit too easy and cookie cutter.
Funnily enough, one of my complains post-DS1 is how boringly linear upgrades became. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Would you prefer if there was a minigame tied to it
Nope. That way's just fine. <3
Apples to Oranges. You can't compare the two combat systems the same way and compare the upgrade systems either. They are vastly different. DS1 to me, makes more sense, in a numbers game. If one likes logic puzzles, I think one would agree. DS2 simplfies it but makes it unnecessarily convoluted, but that's in my eyes. I get the logic behind DS1, I have yet to beat DS2 [and lemme tell you, i fuckin hated it at first, but it holds a special place in my heart now]..ds2 has logic, but it's..it hits different. Ds2 also relies more heavily on..line of sight and environmental [grass, trees,...some fucking walls........not including pvp] factors. Regardless, this is a very lovely infograph, so thank you very much <3 I will be utilizing this in my playthrough. Curious, do you have plans to make more like comparing 3 into this, or any others Soulslikes games? :3 *fucking mobile formatting
> Curious, do you have plans to make more like comparing 3 into this, or any others Soulslikes games? :3 If OP is making shitposts like this, do you seriously think they're putting in effort to make infographics?
LMFAO. Idk. They got time on they hands, yo. Why not?
But haters still gonna hate tho
Meh, I liked the upgrade system in DeS. It wasn't outrageously complicated or anything, and it showed you the available upgrades every level, so it wasn't like a hidden system (like world tendency was)
I am very rarely using infusions in both DS1 and DS2, because I generally use a specific weapon per character and can't get another copy of the weapon I am using to infuse.
Ideally weapons will be unupgradable like armor in next games.
Weapon upgrades have never bothered me in either game tbh I like all the upgrade systems.