Demon's Souls

[nineinchnailed]

Hi guys,

I'm totally confused about upgrading weapons in Dark Souls. I got the Drake Sword fairly early on, and I've got a lvl 42 Pyromancer. I want to get a new weapon but all the weapons I've collected so far don't have anything like the raw damage output of the Drake. Do I need to upgrade these weapons to make them better than the Drake, or do they 'scale' and somehow get more powerful as my strength grows? I've been told that the Drake sword doesn't scale, so presumably others do?

Lots of websites also refer Weapon requirements and modifiers. How do these work? For example, on this website: http://darksoulswiki.wikispaces.com/weapons  they list the requirements/modifiers for the dagger as 5/8/0/0 E/B/-/-. What on earth does that mean?

Sorry for such a noob question.

[SlickShoes]

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nineinchnailed wrote:

Hi guys,

I'm totally confused about upgrading weapons in Dark Souls. I got the Drake Sword fairly early on, and I've got a lvl 42 Pyromancer. I want to get a new weapon but all the weapons I've collected so far don't have anything like the raw damage output of the Drake. Do I need to upgrade these weapons to make them better than the Drake, or do they 'scale' and somehow get more powerful as my strength grows? I've been told that the Drake sword doesn't scale, so presumably others do?

Lots of websites also refer Weapon requirements and modifiers. How do these work? For example, on this website: http://darksoulswiki.wikispaces.com/weapons  they list the requirements/modifiers for the dagger as 5/8/0/0 E/B/-/-. What on earth does that mean?

Sorry for such a noob question.

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5/8/-/- means that it takes 5 strength 8 dexterity 0 faith 0 intelligence to wield that weapon.

E/B/-/- means that it gains damage poorly from your strength stat, greatly from your dexterity stat and not at all from any other stat. (it rates it A-E best to worst)

The drake sword is good but it doesnt scale with any stat so it just has a basic damage output.

Other weapons can be upgraded and upgrading a weapon to +5 is very cheap because the stone needed you can just buy at the blacksmith.

[nineinchnailed]

Hi Slickshoes,

Thanks for the reply. I think I follow that, but I'm confused about how they actually scale. Is there any way of knowing or finding out what your damage output should be with a scaling weapon? Ideally it would be good to be able to compare any of my current weapons with the Drake sword to see whether it's worth swapping.

Should I be upgrading normal weapons or should I save the mats for cool stuff like iaito etc? Finally (sorry for so many Qs), can the Drake sword be upgraded at all?

[SlickShoes]

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nineinchnailed wrote:

Hi Slickshoes,

Thanks for the reply. I think I follow that, but I'm confused about how they actually scale. Is there any way of knowing or finding out what your damage output should be with a scaling weapon? Ideally it would be good to be able to compare any of my current weapons with the Drake sword to see whether it's worth swapping.

Should I be upgrading normal weapons or should I save the mats for cool stuff like iaito etc? Finally (sorry for so many Qs), can the Drake sword be upgraded at all?

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The drake sword can be upgraded but only with dragon scales which are quite rare, it will upgrade to +5 and then thats it so its top damage is around 300, which is less than most other weapons.

Your best bet is to upgrade weapons that you like the look of or have A or B stat scaling.

When you are changing weapons in your inventory press the square button and it changes the info view, on this page it will tell you how much damage a weapon does, to the right of this number is a "+100" or other number, that is how much extra damage you get from your scaling stat.

You can also completely ignore scaling stats, as a weapon enchanted with fire or lightning do as much damage as an A rated stat scaling weapon.

This all becomes much more apparent the further you are in the game though.

I have a couple of good stat scaling weapons but I also have a Iaito Lightning +5. To create the Iaito i upgraded it to +5 at the blacksmith in undead parish, then modified it to +6 at the same guy, upgraded it again at the same guy to +10. Once at +10 I took it to the blacksmith in anor londo who can do lightning weapons, he then upgrades it to lightning, when you do this the scaling changes to -/-/-/- so it wont scale with a stat but you get extra lightning damage.

Currently my Iaito does something like 248 dmg and 248 lightning damage, so a total of around 500.

Hope that makes some sort of sense.

[InfiniteStates · Accepted solution]

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nineinchnailed wrote:

Hi Slickshoes,

Thanks for the reply. I think I follow that, but I'm confused about how they actually scale. Is there any way of knowing or finding out what your damage output should be with a scaling weapon? Ideally it would be good to be able to compare any of my current weapons with the Drake sword to see whether it's worth swapping.

Should I be upgrading normal weapons or should I save the mats for cool stuff like iaito etc? Finally (sorry for so many Qs), can the Drake sword be upgraded at all?

---

When you look at the weapon stats, it shows a list of all the types of damage it does in the ATK section (e.g. physical, magic, fire etc). In that list is two columns - the left most shows the weapon's basic damage, then next to that is shown additional damage based on your stats. If it's negative, it is because you don't meet the stat requirements for that weapon. Generally it will be positive. This is the bit that increases as you level up the necessary stat.

Damage reduction is how much in-coming damage is reduced by blocking with that weapon. Critical is a modifier for backstabs, ripostes etc, but is generally 100. I think daggers and rapiers and stuff have higher criticals.

When you go to equip a weapon, if you press square, you get a screen like above, with numbers in blue being better than your current equipment, and red being worse. And if you press triangle it changes the values shown on the right, so you can compare across other stats like equip weight.

Every 5 levels of upgrade, the weapon needs to be "ascended" at the appropriate blacksmith. It then needs a rarer ore to take it through the next 5 levels. At +10 you can choose to deviate into an elemental path if you have given the appropriate ember to the appropriate blacksmith.

You won't find many base level weapons that are better than the Drake Sword. Especially as early as you can get that sword. But as you level up weapons, and yourself, you will see a better damage output from other weapons. The key is to pick a weapon you like and level the main stat for that weapon (raw damage = str, bow damage=dex, magic/enchanted = int, divine = faith).

I'm sure some of that is not entirely accurate, or doesn't hold true in all cases, but it should give you a good basic foundation for working out what's good, and where to focus.

[nineinchnailed]

Hey mate, that's fantastic. Thanks for the info, that's pretty much answered all my questions - for now, at least!

I kinda regret not putting so many levels into Dexterity now though - I started doing this then I read somewhere that Dexterity had been nerfed from Demon's Souls so I stopped bothering, and now I can't wield most of my favourite weapons! Oh well, I'm only level 43 so there's plenty of time to level yet

Thanks again for all the advice.

[SlickShoes]

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nineinchnailed wrote:
Hey mate, that's fantastic. Thanks for the info, that's pretty much answered all my questions - for now, at least!

I kinda regret not putting so many levels into Dexterity now though - I started doing this then I read somewhere that Dexterity had been nerfed from Demon's Souls so I stopped bothering, and now I can't wield most of my favourite weapons! Oh well, I'm only level 43 so there's plenty of time to level yet

Thanks again for all the advice.

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I am in the same boat, I wish I hadnt levelled strength as much, its not NEEDED like i thought, although it does let me walk around with cool weapons at least.

[nineinchnailed]

Yes, as a bonus to all my strength I can at least wear a full coat of Elite Knight armour!

[SlickShoes]

I keep using the Dragon Tooth weapon and the other massive ones, but as soon as you are in a corridor the enemies eat you alive because the weapons are that large you can't swing them lol

[nineinchnailed]

Yeah I learned that from Demon's Souls. I can't remember what it was called, but there was an enormous sword that was taller than a person and it was AMAZING - but if you got caught in a tight spot you were toast! I really liked the scimitars and other curved blades, so that's what I want to start using in Dark Souls. I better get grinding I think!

How far through are you? Have you finished it yet?