Is it just me or is the Dark Sun tough on NG+?

[CtenosaurOaxacana]

To be fair I am mostly melee build, and my weapon does have a good mid-range attack, but I feel like all their ranged attacks are eating tons more health... and there is always a lot of ground to cover to close the range, too, since they keep teleporting further away.

Not only that, but they throw you out all the way to the first anor londo bonfire on the wall, and decent chances are if you're fighting the Dark Sun, you've fought and killed their firekeeper there too, so yeah... gotta run to another bonfire, ideally the darkmoon tomb where they lurk... if the tower is in right spot. Gwyndolin is not forgiving.

[dcy665]

You are correct. You can check the wiki but ng+ is unbalanced IMHO. ng++ is not as far out of whack. ng+++ and above are well balanced.

Play cautious, play safe with the intent on just getting through it. Ng++ and above are rewarding by comparison. Again, IMO.

[WINTER]

Gwyndolin is tough on ng+ but if you have Crystal Ring Shield you can beat him easily. Anyway, you right, enemies eating a lot hp in a single hit and even random hollow dudes in undead parish can kill you with 2/3 hits. This is not fair, but...git gut I guess?

[nomoreblues]

the obvious method is dodging every of the 3 different attacks (there aren't more are there?)

- big projectile: dodge/run to a side (after release)
- little homing magic swarm: stand behind side pillar
- machine gun arrows: sprint forward diagonally

if u got used to these type of dodges it's much easyer than on your very first run imho, so I think balancing ng+ is actually fine

[dcy665]

Originally posted by nomoreblues:

the obvious method is dodging every of the 3 different attacks (there aren't more are there?)

- big projectile: dodge/run to a side (after release)
- little homing magic swarm: stand behind side pillar
- machine gun arrows: sprint forward diagonally

if u got used to these type of dodges it's much easyer than on your very first run imho, so I think balancing ng+ is actually fine

Don't disagree. And having suffered through it more than once, it doesn't register as an issue anymore. First time though, it was a bit of a wake up call.

[CtenosaurOaxacana]

Crest Shield works almost as well for magic defense, but really it's their multi-arrow attack that insta-kills me if I mess up on my timing. Then again I am not using much armor, so that I can catch up to them quicker. The hard part really is the humilation of being kicked out to the farthest anor londo bonfire lol.

Dark Sun is defeated now but they're definitely one of the hardest ng+ bosses for melee builds imo.

[nomoreblues]

Originally posted by Vulpes Velox:

The hard part really is the humilation of being kicked out to the farthest anor londo bonfire lol.

but that's optional for killing the princess ... and if you didn't kill the firekeeper you still can warp to darkmoon bf

Originally posted by dcy665:

First time though, it was a bit of a wake up call.

I believe you but I can only imagine - I missed that one completely on my first 2 !/2 blind runs, so I was somewhat experienced already but iirc it was on ng+ when I first did it, same as DLC, and I did not struggle much with all of them (while I struggled hard on most of the other bosses on run 1)

[King Robert Baratheon]

I think they didn't have a good measure of what as a fair damage increase on every enemy and boss in NG+ and they increased it too much. I remember a few years ago going into ng+ with full havel's armor and I probably had the Ring of Steel Protection equipped, just because it's ng+, but when I got by those troll things in Blighttown (wielding great clubs) it might as well have been paper armor. They hit insanely hard on ng+.

Edit: that's a little bit off topic since I didn't mention Gwyndolin, but I imagine that enemies and bosses that use magic hit way harder than melee enemies and bosses.