Appreciations of the day

[Brian]

Demon Souls boss according to Wiki.

Doing anything well in those games is praiseworthy, from what I understand. O_O

Congrats, 007.5

[Yuthirin]

I have successfully attached a rear-view mirror to the monitor at my desk at work. I SEE ALL.

[KLSymph]

Old King Doran?

Conteeeext :3

This is Old King Doran:



He is an optional boss in Demon's Souls, who guards the unique sword Demonbrandt and demands you prove yourself before allowing you to take it.  After doing so, you can continue to fight him to get his unique armor set and magical ring.

The following facts apply to fighting him:

• He wields the sword called the Northern Regalia, among the most powerful weapons in the game. If you have poor health or armor, he will kill you in one hit.  If you have high health and the heaviest armor, you will be able to survive the first hit, and while you're stunlocked he will probably kill you with a second.
• The Northern Regalia has both physical and magical damage.  If you are using a shield with insufficient magical damage reduction (and magical is the lowest reduction stat among shields in the game), then he will kill you through your shield.  Blocking with a shield consumes an amount of stamina depending on the shield's guard break reduction, and if you don't have high stamina or your shield has low guard break reduction, he will also kill you through your shield.  If you have maximum stamina and are wielding the unique Dark Silver Shield +5 with 100% magical damage reduction and fully upgraded guard break reduction, he will almost break your guard at full stamina with one attack.
  
• He has more than 2000 HP, and his defense is high enough that a fully upgraded dexterity-based weapon and highly leveled Dexterity will do ~20 damage per hit.  Also, attacking will leave you with less than full stamina for blocking his attacks.
• When you've reduced him down to 50% HP, he will become aggressive and start swinging the Northern Regalia with both hands, attacking faster, doing more damage, and causing more guard break.
• At around 25% HP, he will occasionally retreat and heal himself.  If you do not interrupt this, he will heal himself to full HP in one shot.  Conversely, if you try to heal yourself while close to him, he will attack and kill you before you can complete the animation.  If you try to heal yourself while far from him, he will often take the opportunity to do the same.

There are other considerations if you try to attack with projectiles (long story short, he'll dodge them).  Of the many methods for killing the Old King, most of them involve hit and run tactics, luring him across the level to push him off a high point, or cheesing his AI in various ways.  These methods are unmanly.  The only worthy method is allow him to attack you, parry the blow, and riposte using a fully upgraded Fatal Estoc +5 for a huge damage of... ~180 damage per riposte.

Thus you have to watch the Old King's movements carefully for the split-second differences between his attacks, know the parry timing and distance and perform the action perfectly, budget your stamina between attacking and defending, and move not so close that the Old King can corner and guard break you but also not so far that he'll heal back to full.  More than ten times in a row.

Expected time to run from start of level to Doran's area after each failure: 3-4 minutes.
Expected time from start of fight to death if you're not good at the above task: 5-10 seconds.

I did it for an hour.  Then I ragequit.  Then I came back the next day and took another hour.  And during the last five minutes of that hour my mind was a continuous loop of "Don't choke! Don't choke! Don't choke!"

But in the end, I triumphed.

[Yuthirin]

THIS CALLS FOR A CELEBRATION!

[Brian]

Finished re-reading Sigh....

[Ranma_007]

WOW! Nice one, KL.

[KLSymph]

We shall depend on you for our info privacy, Ranma!  No pressure!

Today in Dark Souls PVP a black phantom invader baited and parried my backstab attempt (by exposing his back as part of a slow attack to invite me to strike, then turning around and making a parry just as I go for it), a fairly advanced technique in that game.

In the next exchange of blows, I blind parried his attack (by predicting his opening move and making a parry before his attack animation begins), an even more advanced technique.

It was the first successful parry I've ever done in PVP.

:D

He still totally beat me though.

[Brian]

Successfully soldered the leak in my flask.  A bit ugly, but functional.

[thepanda]

Best Buy near me was getting rid of its stock of 3DS's over the weekend for 90$ so I finally got one. (New and cheaper than used!)

Then I went to gamestop yesterday just to see what games were actually on the system and got a brand new, limited edition version of Project X Zone for 30$.

[Grahf]

Nice. Sounds like a lucky shopping trip, that's for sure.

[Dracos]

Let me know how it is.

I've not had many wins on it yet, but looking forward to Mario and Luigi: Dream Team.

[Anastasia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sgNFH3OiJg

My winamp is sated.

[Yuthirin]

Oh wow I forgot all about Winamp.

[Brian]

Got to see the Starship Troopers Rifftracks last night with Lord Buffington and some co-workers.

Was good fun despite my mother both being there and being embarrassingly drunk.

[Anastasia]

I fell asleep at the computer for an hour then stumbled to bed. Slept nine hours from there. That feeling when you wake up totally refreshed from a long sleep is amazing.