How can I make NG+ fun? (also, a question about levelling)

[By-Tor And The Snow Cat]

So, I've finished all three DS games (and Bloodborne), and now I'm sad. There's just no other game out there like DS. I started a NG+, but it's just not that fun because I already know where everything is, have all the items, know the enemies and bosses, etc.

So, is there something people do to make NG+ more fun? I know there are a lot of people out there who have played NG+7. But it doesn't seems nearly as interesting when I don't have that wonder of walking into a new environment, discovering a monstrous boss, collecting every item I can see, and all the things that make DS great.

Also, if I do decide to go ahead with my NG+, how should I go about spending my souls? I have some interest in invasions and I have a strength-based, sword-and-shield character. My strength is at 50. Would it be worthwhile to start investing in intelligence so I can cast some spells in combat? If so, how high should I go, and how high should I go with strength before abandoning that stat?

Oh, speaking of invasions: when I got to the Gazebo in Oolacile Township, I couldn't find anyone for duels, team duels, or deathmatches. Is nobody doing these in DS1? Is it all taking place in DS3 these days?

Thanks for any help.

[Kthulhu]

Originally posted by Moving Pictures:

Oh, speaking of invasions: when I got to the Gazebo in Oolacile Township, I couldn't find anyone for duels, team duels, or deathmatches. Is nobody doing these in DS1?

From what I've gathered from talking to people who have been fans since PtDE was released, the Battle of Stoicism arena was NEVER really popular. You'll do better invading / trying to get invaded in the Township itself. If you want to invade, go the Darkwraith route. If you want to be invaded, spam the Dried Finger. Metal level is recommended for the Township.

[Kthulhu]

Originally posted by Moving Pictures:

Also, if I do decide to go ahead with my NG+, how should I go about spending my souls? I have some interest in invasions and I have a strength-based, sword-and-shield character. My strength is at 50. Would it be worthwhile to start investing in intelligence so I can cast some spells in combat? If so, how high should I go, and how high should I go with strength before abandoning that stat?

All the stats have soft caps. You're actually already PAST the soft cap for strenght, although with some pieces of equipment requiring 50 or more, that's not too bad. For example, you can use Havel's Shield. I wouldn't recommend going beyond 50 though.

I beat NG with a slightly overleveled quality build. As I went into NG+ and beyond, I actually ramped all the stats up to the soft caps (and a bit beyond, in some cases). I wanted to create a character that could do pretty much anything. As that character currently stands, they have a 50 in all stats except for Endurance (maxed out at 99, gotta love more equipment load), Resistance (taken to the soft cap of 30) and Vitality (somewhere in 60s). Obviously, this character isn't really in the PVP game anymore, but I've devoted it to being a SunBro co-op helper.

[AGH!Bear]

Well..you could try Nioh. It doesn't have the flowing connection of areas like Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne (and DS2 I guess but the areas are...bleehhh), but with all three DLCs there is a lot of content. Weapon movesets are per category but there is a wider variety of moves on each weapon type, and the combat is very nuanced.

And Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is coming out in March, hopefully will be quite good. Nioh 2 sometime 2019 TBA. Also hopefully Code: Vein for 2019, and hopefully it'll provide soulslike combat.

[Last_Exile]

installing this could help
https://www.nexusmods.com/darksoulsremastered/mods/2

[TrueArchery]

Don't know what exactly you like the most about Souls, but there are plenty of other titles with lots of exploration/nice maps and other neat stuff that keeps you hooked for a while... GTA, Fallout, Borderlands, Red Dead, Witcher, Dragons Dogma, Nier, Yakuza, Xenoblade, Assassin's Creed, Saint's Row, Dragon Age, Batman Arkham, TES, Tomb Raider,... Salt and Sanctuary is also great and albeit a 2D platformer, feels like playing a Souls game more than anything else.
I guess there's also Lords of the Fa- okay, lets not talk about that. Probably left out tons of potentially enjoyable games. I really don't understand people who can't enjoy anything but Souls after playing through that franchise.

[By-Tor And The Snow Cat]

Originally posted by Kthulhu:

Originally posted by Moving Pictures:

Also, if I do decide to go ahead with my NG+, how should I go about spending my souls? I have some interest in invasions and I have a strength-based, sword-and-shield character. My strength is at 50. Would it be worthwhile to start investing in intelligence so I can cast some spells in combat? If so, how high should I go, and how high should I go with strength before abandoning that stat?

All the stats have soft caps. You're actually already PAST the soft cap for strenght, although with some pieces of equipment requiring 50 or more, that's not too bad. For example, you can use Havel's Shield. I wouldn't recommend going beyond 50 though.

I beat NG with a slightly overleveled quality build. As I went into NG+ and beyond, I actually ramped all the stats up to the soft caps (and a bit beyond, in some cases). I wanted to create a character that could do pretty much anything. As that character currently stands, they have a 50 in all stats except for Endurance (maxed out at 99, gotta love more equipment load), Resistance (taken to the soft cap of 30) and Vitality (somewhere in 60s). Obviously, this character isn't really in the PVP game anymore, but I've devoted it to being a SunBro co-op helper.

Ooh, helping other people! That does sound fun. I might try that, especially because I'm pretty terrible at one-on-one combat in PVP. I think I only beat two of my invaders in my entire playthrough :(

[By-Tor And The Snow Cat]

Originally posted by skeptibearicalbuddhist:

Well..you could try Nioh. It doesn't have the flowing connection of areas like Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne (and DS2 I guess but the areas are...bleehhh), but with all three DLCs there is a lot of content. Weapon movesets are per category but there is a wider variety of moves on each weapon type, and the combat is very nuanced.

And Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is coming out in March, hopefully will be quite good. Nioh 2 sometime 2019 TBA. Also hopefully Code: Vein for 2019, and hopefully it'll provide soulslike combat.

I own Nioh and put quite a few hours into it! I really enjoyed my time with it, but I never finished and, after too much time away from it, I started to feel like I would need to begin learning the mechanics all over again. Still, I posted this comment regarding why I love DS so much more many months ago:

"I love Nioh so far, but I definitely don't like it nearly as much as DS, except with regard to combat. While the combat mechanics are deeper and the feeling smoother and more responsive, the game just doesn't compare in level design, aesthetics, and overall creativity. The DS series truly earns the label of "immersive" (most game given the label do not, and trully immersive games are exceedingly rare); you always feel like you're exploring a wondrous new world, with characters, lands, buildings, fortresses, ruins, and a story that make you marvel at a beautiful world you didn't know existed. It truly feels like a place and time somewhere far off, rather than a set of rather ugly and uncreative levels.

I'm on The Spirit Stone Slumbers right now, and it is one of the ugliest and most boring levels I've ever played in a game like this. The rain makes everything look muddy and obscured, and the level as a whole is just one big open space through which you're forced on a specific path to the end. Very uninspired design. Oh, and the loot system infuriates me. Halfway through every level, I have an insane amount of loot through which I need to sort. There's absolutely no reason for there to be this much loot, as most of it is utterly worthless.

Still, I play this game for the wonderful combat, and it truly excels in that area. The animations are also phenomenally smooth."

EDIT: I also made this comment extolling some of the virtues of both games in the same thread on the Nioh board:

"I actually never paid any attention to the lore in DS. In fact, one of the reasons DS is so dear to me is because I didn't have to read about the lore or understand the story, and I never did. Just meeting the characters, looking at the lands and fortresses (both crumbling and not), fighting the bosses who so fit their environments as to tell their own stories by design, and watching my own character walk through these lands made me FEEL a story. Feeling and sensing a story is, for me, even more special and unique than being told one.

I adore Ninja Gaiden Black, and I love the combat in Ninja Gaiden 2. Nioh reminds me of why Ninja Gaiden 2 wasn't nearly the game it should have been, at least when it comes tolevel design. Thankfully, Nioh still beats NG2 in level design, as it trashes the narrow corridors and at least slightly reduces the linearity of levels. The combat is better and, best of all, the camera works!"

[By-Tor And The Snow Cat]

Originally posted by TrueArchery:

Don't know what exactly you like the most about Souls, but there are plenty of other titles with lots of exploration/nice maps and other neat stuff that keeps you hooked for a while... GTA, Fallout, Borderlands, Red Dead, Witcher, Dragons Dogma, Nier, Yakuza, Xenoblade, Assassin's Creed, Saint's Row, Dragon Age, Batman Arkham, TES, Tomb Raider,... Salt and Sanctuary is also great and albeit a 2D platformer, feels like playing a Souls game more than anything else.
I guess there's also Lords of the Fa- okay, lets not talk about that. Probably left out tons of potentially enjoyable games. I really don't understand people who can't enjoy anything but Souls after playing through that franchise.

Thanks for the suggestions. I've played nearly all of those games, but either didn't like them (the entire AC series, Arkham, Tomb Raider, Xenoblade) or eventually tired of them well before they ended (Yakuza, Nier: Automata, Dreagon Age). The best of them, I found, were GTA V, Salt and Sanctuary, and Fallout 3 and NV, all of which I loved and finished. Fallout 3 came the closes to providing me the sense of wonder and discovery that DS did.

Unfortunately, I find Red Dead intensely boring. Unlike the GTA games, there's a ton of downtime where there's really nothing to see or do. I didn't mind downtime between missions in GTA because you could always be doing something (running over pedestrians, blasting your gat out of a stolen car's window, marveling at the incredible world they built, etc.), but, in Red Dead, the downtime involved simply riding through the same scenery over and over. By the end of the game (which I never reached), you've probably spent more time riding through the same dusty scenery for dozens of hours (I had a similar problem with Nier: Automata). And I haven't bought Read Dead 2 because, from what I understand, they've added an enormous cache of mechanics I hate in games, like survival mechanics and all sorts of busy work.

Salt and Sanctuary, though? That was a great experience. Definitely Dark Souls in 2D. Unfortunately, I had the same problem with trying to play it in NG+: nothing was new to me anymore, and I had collected all the items and knew where everything was and what would happen.

EDIT: what's TES?

"I guess there's also Lords of the Fa- okay, lets not talk about that. Probably left out tons of potentially enjoyable games." HA!

" I really don't understand people who can't enjoy anything but Souls after playing through that franchise."

See my comment in reply to skeptibearicalbuddhist regarding why DS is so special to me.

[TrueArchery]

TES = The Elder Scrolls. Skyrim in particular.

Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted and The Last of Us were also great games/franchises with great level design, but only for 1 playthrough.
But according to your posts that's your core issue anyway as you already know most of the game when you have finished the game. There are little to no "ohhhhhh" moments. As long as the whole exploration thing is the force that keeps you playing and not other elements like the gameplay or just doing stupid ♥♥♥♥ with your friends in games like Saint's Row or completionist/grinding-desire you're probably better off looking for other games than trying to milk the last drops out of Souls.

[By-Tor And The Snow Cat]

Originally posted by TrueArchery:

TES = The Elder Scrolls. Skyrim in particular.

Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted and The Last of Us were also great games/franchises with great level design, but only for 1 playthrough.
But according to your posts that's your core issue anyway as you already know most of the game when you have finished the game. There are little to no "ohhhhhh" moments. As long as the whole exploration thing is the force that keeps you playing and not other elements like the gameplay or just doing stupid ♥♥♥♥ with your friends in games like Saint's Row or completionist/grinding-desire you're probably better off looking for other games than trying to milk the last drops out of Souls.

Ah, I'm about to start Skyrim. I'm just getting the mods in place.

I hated the Uncharted series for so many reasons. The gunplay was so painfully mediocre, the supposed climbing/platforming sections were essentially just scripted events where you shuffled over to the correct spot on the linear path and then pressed a button to jump, and the whole game was so linear. I don't mind linear games, so long as they have large areas where you don't feel like you're being funneled and there are alternate paths (e.g. Wolfenstein: The New Order), but Uncharted never felt like that; it felt more like a graphics demo.

I have gone back to the GTA games just to mess around and it's definitely an enormous amount of fun, and Saints Row 4 was a blast while it kept me interested, but I lost that interest about 20 hours in. It just didn't have the variety that GTA V does. But, speaking of open-world games where you run around in a city, you know what game held my attention for a long time? The first Prototype game! That was a good time.

I think I will try going back into Souls and trying out either Darkwraiths or Sunbros, though I'll really need to up my PVP game if I go with the former. Are most people playing the DSR now, or still using PTDE?

EDIT: Oh, and I'm a HUGE fan of the Ratchet and Clank series. Great stuff! But I disliked The Last of Us almost as much as Uncharted. In TLOU's case, it just felt incredibly repetitive, and I get bored very easily.

I'm currently playing The Witcher 3, which is definitely scratching my exploration itch.

[Dusk of Oolacile]

Originally posted by Moving Pictures:

Also, if I do decide to go ahead with my NG+, how should I go about spending my souls?

Health and stamina should be your top priority until you hit 50/40. Then you level your damage stats. And Resistance to 99 of course (jk).

[By-Tor And The Snow Cat]

Originally posted by Dusk of Oolacile:

Originally posted by Moving Pictures:

Also, if I do decide to go ahead with my NG+, how should I go about spending my souls?

Health and stamina should be your top priority until you hit 50/40. Then you level your damage stats. And Resistance to 99 of course (jk).

We all know Resistance is the most important stat. I got it to 99 before I did anything else. No way I could have survived otherwise...

[Kthulhu]

Do not mock the RES build!

[By-Tor And The Snow Cat]

Originally posted by Kthulhu:

Do not mock the RES build!

If there is such a thing as a RES build, I desperately want to hear about it and how it works. Maybe if everyone invading you is suddenly using only poison or fire?

Seriously. It would be like opening the Ark of the Covenant to read this.

[Kthulhu]

Originally posted by Moving Pictures:

Originally posted by Kthulhu:

Do not mock the RES build!

If there is such a thing as a RES build, I desperately want to hear about it and how it works.

I present....the resistance build!!!

https://soulsplanner.com/darksouls/3077