hide-n-go-gravelord - adventures in spreading misery for as long as possible, seeing if invaders ever find you

I've done a little bit of gravelording while hiding in the past, but I decided to resurrect the idea after someone challenged me to find them in dark Anor Londo.

Hide-n-go-Gravelord

It's like hide and seek while gravelording, but the primary rule is to give up a specific location forever after it's discovered. If no one ever finds you, it's up to you if you want to start giving hints to players who message you and ask.

I'm only allowing certain "unintended areas" on a case-by-case basis. I wouldn't allow hiding in the out of bounds area of New Londo Ruins, because you usually have to do some quit/ reload tricks to gain control of the camera once you're down there. That's not fair for invaders. Something I would allow, though, is something like an unintended ledge that is amongst regular in-bound areas (like the lower undead burg shortcut), if it isn't a one-way suicide mission to get there.

My other rule is to give up my location here, so others can learn about potential hiding spots. There've been a bunch of times in the past where I could never find a host, so hopefully I can learn more about hiding locations and share the results...

Location #1 - Oolacile Township:



This starting location was perhaps a little unfair. It's one of those questionable 'unintended' areas that I decided to allow with my specific rules. I hid on the back corner of that rooftop (opposite corner from the X). What made it somewhat fair is that a keen observer should have still been able to see my black aura from a distance.

I wasn't found until the 26th invader! A Japanese player made the jump and WOG'ed me to my death. Congratulations! Now I must find a new location...

Stand on top of the swinging pendulum in Sen's Fortress. Nobody will find you, especially with how hard and risky it is to get on top of one.

I have a bunch of ideas for Sen's Fortess, I'll be sure to do that too! I got a routine down where I can land on top of one of the swinging blades with about a 1/3 success rate, so it shouldn't be too hard. I was doing some friendly troll invasions there before:



Although landing on it is a 'one way suicide attempt', a player doesn't need to make the same drop to count as finding me, so that's cool of course!

Hmm, so I'm waiting in an area by the beginning of the Undead Burg. Much to my surprise, I'm level 102 and no one is invading me. I've been sitting here human, for almost 50 minutes.

This is probably because of invasion zones/ host targeting? A lot of invasion areas in the game don't actually require you to be very close to the host. Some spots do (invade on roof of Sen's, host will be on or near roof, etc), but a lot don't. You can invade in the upper pendulum-axe area in Sen's Fortress when a host is all the way down in the tar pit, and in the Painted World you can seemingly invade anywhere regardless of where the host is. I assumed the burg would be similar, since it's not a very large level.

I haven't even seen my white sign soapstone gray out yet, so I guess the beginning of the burg probably does have a solid division. It is possible to invade in that area, and I'm not surprised that it happens far less often than by the bonfire, but I am surprised someone hasn't shown up by now.

Thats odd. We all know the the eye can be tricky, sometime it will activate and sometimes not, it won't even inform you...


are you using the item in the bonfire and then moving to location, or just using at the location?

I'm just using it at the location after I get there, to be safe. Normally I even wait one for red invader to show up and leave, to make certain that I'm connected to at least one potential player.

I finally got a red after waiting for an hour, he couldn't find me and left. Hopefully the pace will pick up, but this might mean the entrance to the burg is a decent gravelording location if you're trying to avoid reds as much as possible. If I wasn't hiding my sign and put it on the main staircase, perhaps players would still find my sign while few reds use that invasion location.

Nice info. For a long time I thought you could not even Co op/invade in that area. Its certainly hidden

Some other places you may want to try is on one of the many random jumps in the jail part of Dukes Archives. There are plenty of spots there, though I know you cannot directly invade in there, so I am not sure if gravelording outside the door then walking in would work.

Plenty of places in Tomb of the giants. Like with the ember, where the silver ring is at, behind one of the hidden walls.

One place that will probably get you no action is lost Izalith. Stand on some random branch far into the lava and wait.

In the Crystal cave where the blue titanite slab is.

I'm usually doing trades with my SL 1 on the balcony with Light Crossbow in Undead Burg. We had troubles connecting today, so I decided to give Red Orb a try and invaded some Gravelord, who was siiting in the corner of the balcony. I got killed, of course, but when I read this topic, it remineded me of the guy. Perhaps someone had retro's idea.
Maybe I got slaughtered by retro himself.

retro wrote:Hmm, so I'm waiting in an area by the beginning of the Undead Burg. Much to my surprise, I'm level 102 and no one is invading me. I've been sitting here human, for almost 50 minutes.

 
This is actually one of my favorite "secrets" about the Burg.  If you stand around in the area before the first fog gate (in the doorway of that building adjacent to that lone firebomb thrower, with the other hollow in the doorway behind you) you almost never ever get invaded, regardless of soul level.  I don't know why, perhaps because everyone invading does so up at the bonfire and it doesn't register hosts in that initial area or something.  But whenever I want to test something or swap items with coop summons, I do it there and I've never once been invaded.   It even works if you summon people up at the bonfire, and then everyone runs back to the starting area.

I used to think it was hard coded that way as safe zone, as an extra nicety to human noobs trying to get to the first bonfire, but a few folks claimed they have been invaded there.  It's possible they started to get invaded before entering the area, though.

Nope, you can get invaded in there normally, however the invader must use his Orb to invade while being present in this area. Everybody invades in the bonfire area and thus hosts in the previous area can't be invaded by these guys. The area is normal, everyone can invade there, but nodoby does it. That's all.

A good analogy is invading in Parish. It's divided to two areas. The bridge with Sunlight Altar and the church. You can't ivade hosts present in one area, while being in the other. The only exception can be that the invasion already started and the host changed his location while the game was processing the invasion.

The invaders location decided who he invades and even where he spawns. Try using an Orb near Taurus Demons fog and you'll spawn right in front of it, for example.

The same invasion locations do apply to the Cracked/ Red Eye Orb, Blue Eye Orb, and Gravelord Signs (the gravelord signs can appear anywhere, but wherever you find it is the same as using an orb in the same spots --- you spawn at the same corresponding locations).

The spawn locations do not apply to Red Sign Soapstone, White Sign Soapstone, and Dragon Eye (causes player to spawn exactly where they left their sign) nor the invasions rings (invades randomly amongst a set of predetermined locations).

I wrote a list of all the invasion locations here:
http://darksouls.wikispaces.com/invasion-spawn-locations

I tried to be thorough and even test the boundaries of each location, but I didn't test anything like which invasion zones target hosts within what specifc area of the level. You can get a general idea pretty quickly sometimes, but to know exactly how it works would take a ludicrous amount of testing. :o

Sentiel wrote:I'm usually doing trades with my SL 1 on the balcony with Light Crossbow in Undead Burg. We had troubles connecting today, so I decided to give Red Orb a try and invaded some Gravelord, who was siiting in the corner of the balcony. I got killed, of course, but when I read this topic, it remineded me of the guy. Perhaps someone had retro's idea.
Maybe I got slaughtered by retro himself.

Haha oh wow, I think that probably was me! That's exactly where I was. Only two invaders found me, and one of them was level 1. Sorry for the combustion spam I probably used. :p

It was a ninja with Ring of Fog, or Hidden Body, who indeed did a Pyro spam. But to be fair. I wanted to use Fire Tempest.

Shame that PS3 has only a very limited number of people you can have in the Players Met section. I would find your ID and send you a Friend Request.
You escaped this time.