Limited respawn - pro or con

I'm a true Souls fan. I've played through Dark Souls and Demon Souls, captivated with the mystic atmosphere and lore and the awesome combat system. Now, I've been playing DSII for more than a week now and this limited respawning crap is really starting to piss me off.

It's not so much about the grinding/ soul farming as it's about everything else: Say, you want to get a specific item but you kill all the enemies that potentially drop it - tough luck, man... There is also the issue of limited titanite materials you can harvest and therefore limited equipment you can upgrade. I think this really cripples the hardcore players in many ways, especially those, like myself, who prefer to play it offline. And NO, coins and other luck crap and bonfire ascetics are not viable solution, they really are not.

Because of this lame design innovation now I often find myself calculating and counting souls and equipment drops like I'm some bank clerk - it's ridiculous, tedious and kills all the spontaneity for me. It just seems like a really, really bad idea (although it's a fat chance From will admit it).

Anyway, what's your opinion?

To me isn't a problem at all. And, imho, they made this decision to "force" you to get to new game +, to max your entire equipment, get enough spells etc.

My opinion is that this is one problem in the much larger cock-up in this game. It's my personal preference that spawns are limited and that it completely destroys the difficulty of the game. I realize they were trying to take inspiration from Demon's in certain aspects, but the addition of Ascetics and limited respawns had me frowning. I would have much preferred them to bring back World Tendency with a few tweaks and additions.

Also, I had no problem advancing into NG+ in the previous two games. Due to the re-playability from level-design, lore, and gameplay I was happy to go through it all again.

DS2 suffers in all those areas, mostly in level design being boring and nonsensical that I lost all focus and stopped caring. None of the bosses made any sense either; the lore was vague and flimsy and just made the game seem like a poor fan-made dedication.

Nothing really seems to have improved over Dark Souls, save for the inventory UI.

As a fellow Souls vet, I understand where you are coming from, but I rather enjoy it. It forces players to think about what they are going to do, instead of spending everything willy-nilly. It adds a more strategic aspect to a game that already tests the limits of everything you are and have (patience, strategy, etc). Beats getting everything there is to get first run.

In my opinion it took me a little while to get used too. But i think it really adds to the atmosphere overall. It makes those weapon upgrades harder. It makes u think about wear to spend your souls wisely. Like a real undead savouring every hard earned soul.

@zdragonlord:

True. But Dark Souls is really a game about achieving victory trough trial and error. Unless you're cruising forums and following walktroughs all the time you are bound to make some mistakes sooner or later, like not killing that Lautrec asshole as soon as you can in DS, or upgrading initially good weapon that turns out to be uber-lame later on. In other words, this design concept limits the players choices significantly and it indirectly punishes offline oriented gamers.

As I said, I'm still at the first half of the game, this might not be as big problem as it now seems. But I will sure as hell double check the stats/upgrade details for any weapon or armor I like before I decide to upgrade it.

The problem I have with the limited re-spawning is that you could essentially kill a group of enemies 10-15x at the start of a stage and repeat this until the path to the boss is clear. It's time consuming but it lowers the risk of getting to the boss with use-able items intact. I loved that part of the past games that forced you to run the gauntlet every time you died, not the first 10-15x whereby you're given a reprieve. It felt like a handicap to me when I first realized it and it still does. It doesn't force me to be cautious - I take way too many risks because I think "why bother? I've already killed all the enemies up to my bloodstain so I can just walk up to it." Whereas if I died mid-level in Demon's and Dark Souls I would have a hell of a challenge getting back to my stain, especially since I never used Ring of Sacrifices.

That's another thing that annoys me: repairable sacrificial rings. Another way of nerfing the difficulty for those complaining that the older games were "too hard." I'm forced to use them in this game though because of the limited effigies. I would have much preferred they went back to World Tendency and Humanity rather than these silly, non-renewable resources. When I run out of effigies from PvP'ing I'll be forced to visit that shrine in Amana (after exhausting all sources of drops), which is time consuming and laborious and completely destroys the momentum of PvP.

Couldn't agree more man, I feel so cheap using the three rings (two RROS and one Petri Ring) but it is ultimately the best tactic, deaths cost you 3000-6000 souls, effigies are no longer a scare resource, it takes the risk out, the only irritation is when all 3 break and I have to port back to Mangina to repair them

As far as the enemy despawns go, I think they could have tweaked it a little more, hollows and 'humans' should respawn, but monsters, creatures and animals shouldn't, like they ressurected at a bonfire and walked back, like you did.

The worst part for me was either the Ancient Dragon run, Salt Steps Bonfire , Straids Cell or the lower bonfire in Tseldora, (seriously, enemy spawns on bonfire's is a little annoying

Most of the times, if you need to kill an enemy more than 12 times, you either NEED the help of them despawning, or you are farming for souls and cheating yourself out of the experience

I played through Demon's and Dark 13 times each, and I'm most of the way through NG+7 in DS2 and I've found the limited respawn to be a definite improvement because it makes it less tedious. There's still a lot of souls and items available, and I've appreciated the enemies disappearing after a while at times when I was stuck on an area or a boss.

To give an example, The Lost Sinner. It was one thing finding a way to deal with her in NG, then the pyros popped in for NG+, and then in the higher NG pluses she seemed to jump around a lot more as well, and I had to change my strategy. I always found it much easier to get back down to the boss after killing at least two of the annoying archers before the lift. It was nice how they stopped coming back after a while.

@horosavinXX: it baffles me why anyone would play this game offline.

Limited respawns piss me off. There just isn't really much of a reason for it when considering most equipment someone is trying to obtain isn't really "better" than anything else anyway. Weapon and armor stats seem to be in some form of balance with attack/defensive values and weight. So they are really just punishing a player that wants to make a particular kind of build. Or likes equipment for ascetic reasons.

From could have just removed souls gained from monsters after so many runs rather than removing the spawns entirely. I don't see how it even makes the game easier either. By the time someone has successfully cleared out a stages' entire group of mobs enough times that they don't respawn, the player will at that point be more than capable of dealing with the mobs relatively easily anyway. You don't run through enemies THAT many times without figuring things out.

I generally prefer playing rpg games on my own. I like the idea of discovering lore and roaming some unknown fantasy worlds alone. That's just how i like my games, simple as that.

But one thing I specifically like very much about Dark Souls (at least the first game) is that melancholic, gloomy atmosphere of loneliness, a burdening feel of being isolated and cut out from the rest of the world. And online multilayer only ruins that effect for me. But, again, that's just how I like it, you can play it however you like.

That's one thing DkS 1 did much better than this one: multi-player felt like a secondary addition that threw hostile invaders at you once in awhile and had the phantom glow of unexpected help at random times. The covenants were also designed to mimic this sense of distance between you and others - the Gravelords purpose was to infest player's worlds with AI black phantoms, increasing the difficulty. It was a good mechanic because not every covenant was geared towards multi-player and it wouldn't instantly match you against another player.

DkS 2 is much more multi-player orientated. The Rat covenant - which I believe is a reiteration of the Gravelords - is far more personal, dragging players into their world for an unsolicited meeting. Even the Pilgrims didn't seem capable of bringing back the personality of the first game. For me, the only covenants worth a damn are the Sentinels and Brotherhood, as they mimic the original play-style of the previous game.

@horosavinXX:

Limited titanite materials? I have like 8 or 9 slabs, and you can buy unlimited shards. You can harvest chunks in the belltower. I have way too many titanite stuff, and I wasn't even looking for them.

@csvichf: @horosavinXX: You can buy unlimited chunks post-game. The only thing difficult to come by is Twinkling but one section of the Shrine of Amana and a covetous ring will net you 4-7 pieces per run.

Contrast that with Demon Titanite in the first game: limited treasure drops, non-respawning enemies (I think there's 4 who all drop 1 piece each), and one respawning enemy that has a crap-ton of health, is located on a narrow bridge, and has two devastating attacks that can nearly one-shot you.

Twinkling was easier to come by but harvesting them meant fighting those goddamn Maneater clams, who had a lower drop rate than the clerics in Amana. Then there's Dragon Scales which can only be harvested from the Wyverns in the narrowest level of the game.

Both chunks and slabs in the first game had very rare drop rates (you're talking like 0.3% for some), and there's maybe 3-4 normal slabs in one play-through, 2 of which are difficult to obtain and extremely easy to miss, whereas there's only 1-2 of each coloured slab available per play-through, again with extremely rare drops from difficult mini-bosses and enemies.

If you think DkS2 is bad, don't bother with DkS.

@Lyrebon:

Chunks were not rare in Dark Souls. There were quite a few of them available in Sens Fortress and Annor Londo. They dropped from the Sentinels there too, kind of annoying to deal with but ya got used to it after a while and learned how to pull one away from the other. There was also a few in New Londo. Wraiths weren't too bad as long as you had a weapon that could kill them with either a parry or backstab. Although i will admit the chunk drop rate from Wraiths seemed pretty low. I think you could get a lot of different stuff including plain chunks in The Hollow.

Consider these points when comparing Dks with Dks2 titanite.

Weapon durability was just not an issue, so there was less of a legitimate reason to carry around multiple, upgraded weapons anyway.

Mages didn't require it for catalysts/talismans.

Armor and shield upgrades were largely irrelevant unless you were going for an optimized pvp build and wanted to squeeze every possible stat bonus you could get. So much of the armor couldn't be upgraded because it came with stats comparable to maxed out gear anyway. A lot of the shields woudn't even upgrade right because the stats for blocking were already too good. In Dks2, a player has a much greater incentive to spend titanite on armor and shields.

More categories of titanite mean there was a much greater chance you would utilize different colors depending on the type of character you played. That means we cant really just compare a Dks chunk with a Dks2 chunk. There was a lot of titanite available if we consider all the colors, Demon, Dragon, Twinkling. And there seemed to be a better evenly split amount of weapons between standard and twinkling categories.

For those reasons, titanite in Dks1 was a lot more abundant and each piece carried greater benefit to a player than now too since a maxed out weapon made you a walking god but in this game, not so much.

@amillionhp: Farming in DkS often took several minutes to hours just to obtain what takes a few seconds in DkS2, since you can buy an unlimited supply from merchants. If there's anything to contrast it'd be the cost of materials; the cheapest vendors I can find across both games are the Giant Blacksmith in 1, and Chloanne in 2, who both sell large titanite shards for 3,800 and 2,500 souls, respectively. Not to mention that souls were extremely valuable in DkS, as the cost of levelling and improving equipment was vastly greater than DkS2.

Aside from treasure, chunks required you to beat enemies that had uncommon/rare drops, so you weren't always guaranteed chunks, even with 410 item discovery. You cannot buy chunks in the first game, you had to farm them, so where I could buy 50 chunks off the bat from Chloanne, I'd actually have to spend a lot of my time grinding those 50 out of the enemies. Normal chunks from Crystal Lizards were never certain - they're always a random drop.

Weapon durability was much more of an issue in DkS not having a damage indicator. You had to constantly check for damage or you could end up half-way through a boss battle and your main offensive weapon breaking.

I'd disagree with the armors too: Many of the armors, besides Havel's and the Stone Guardian's (which were by far the heaviest in the game), many of the boss and unique armors couldn't perform better than upgraded, standard gear. My character mostly wore a Hard Leather armor or the Armor of Artorias (upgradable), and the Painted Guardian leggings. Head-wear and gauntlets were normally standard gear. As a Dex build I had to think much more about my load than I ever have done in DkS2.

I had to carry much less and opt for less defence if I wanted to swing around a sturdier weapon. Blocking in DkS could easily be nullified or bypassed by thrusting weapons like rapiers, and the guard break kick knocked someone off balance while draining their stamina. Upgrading defensive equipment was just as critical.

I think I covered the rarity of most types of chunks, and the difficulty and time constraints required to grind them. At 410 item discovery, the Maneater clams in the Crystal Cave drop maybe 4-5 twinkling per run, sometimes less. Demon could be repeatedly obtained ONLY from one enemy in the game, and he happens to be the most difficult in the area. Dragon Scales had to be farmed from the wyverns: they were powerful, aggressive, and it was easy to get knocked off the bridge and small walkways. Red chunks were rare/very rare drops from three enemies in the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith. Blue were rare drops from the Moonlight Butterflies and Crystal Golems in the Crystal Cave. White were rare drops from the Bone Tower enemies and the Pinwheel Servants in the Tomb. All are relatively difficult and time-consuming to farm effectively and chunks were not sold by merchants.

Maxed out weapons did nothing more than a max weapon in DkS2. An Iaito +15 would still do around the same base damage as an Uchigatana +10 in DkS2. You have weapons like the Dragon's Tooth in DkS2 that can 2 hit-kill other players.

Materials are far more abundant in DkS2, given also that in DkS, per play-through, you could only obtain four slabs, two of which were easily missed. DkS2 offered me a good dozen on my first run. Chunks couldn't be readily bought, they had to be farmed, and large shards cost 50% more than their DkS2 base price.

It's hardly as important anymore now that I'm at a pretty high SL, but I liked the respawn limit because I would feel compelled to run through their respawn supply (mostly for bosses that were tricky to get to) and then spend a shit tonne of souls leveling up.

In all seriousness though, who can really see themselves killing every single enemy in the game 15 times anyway?

I like a bit of old school grinding, but even I don't have that patience...

There are some obviously good farming spots such as the Purgatory run and the Iron Keep, but I do generally find that once I'm done with that, I do have a more than sufficient amount of souls to use (honestly, I'm at level 250 in ng+ with only 3 or 4 ascetics used...).