Journey to max sl

I'm getting kinda bored of this games pvp. It just feels...hollow without having to do pve anymore. So I've decided to do a journey to Max Sl!

Rules:
1. Start as Deprived, level up each stat once before leveling it again. (as in, if i level up vitality, i cant level it up again until ive leveled my att, dex, str, res, faith, int, end to be equal with it)
2. Must be human as often as Allowed.
3. No camping levels with phantoms for easy souls from invaders.
4. If invaded, see it through. Either kill the phantom, or challenge the boss. NO RAGEQUITTING.
5. No camping completed levels (such as painted world) for their easy souls. If I wanna grind the failanx, I must be invadable.

Feel free to come murder me!

Have fun, but while reaching max SL this way is technically possible, it's extremely unlikely that you will actually get there before giving up or going insane. Nothing personal against the OP, it's just not a realistic goal imo.

Yeah, I suggest you make a more viable pvp build with it in the interim and do a lot of pvp with it to farm souls. The 'round level-up' will make this take so much longer and make it needlessly more difficult.

Don't worry about the insanity part, I already am! Besides, I'm a veteran of Disgaea, Diablo, and World of Warcraft. Painfully slow grinds are nothing new to me.

OP might find this to be an interesting read. There's some bickering, but also some intelligent discussion on the extensive grind associated with attempting this:

http://forums.demonssouls.info/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=15835

This will be interesting. Have fun with this.

wow that thread was depressing. Poor guy had no support at all. Go for it Barry, record some key bits so you have proof and find a way. By NG+7 farming with everything else and if you overkill them should get you a hefty prize. PvPing will likely be a must, and the higher you PvP the more youll get.

I shall be one of the people that are dismissive of the idea. It takes a massive amount of grinding, and that isn't fun...and what do you get as a reward? A mess that has loss all its personality as it can do well on every stat. And past a certain point you will just be wasting points due to diminishing returns, and also coop will disappear and PvP will get rarer and rarer.

You lose a lot and you only gain grinding, I don't recommend it, but there's nothing written about tastes, I guess...

It is daunting and highly unlikely. Doesn't mean he can't test himself. And cans Forest Hunters invade infinitely up?

Beat Tourist Demon, woohoo! everythings lvl 12! Beat Gargoyles, this is going swimmingly! -time for quelaag- uh...ima do capra first! Beat Capra, uh...I still don't have anything that can beat Quelaag reliably. -drops character-

That lasted awhile didn't it? Guess I'll just...farm green titanite off the slugs or something.

Yarxov wrote:It is daunting and highly unlikely. Doesn't mean he can't test himself. And cans Forest Hunters invade infinitely up?

Forest Hunters can invade infinitely up, though if I were to do this I'd have a bit of an issue with this. The idea is to level all the way up legitimately, right? At what point does it become cheating if the people you're getting a massive stockpile of souls from cheated themselves?

I realize it'd still be a ton of work (and less efficient still than another I idea I have), and I feel like most of the community would agree that at least random encounters with others who've cheated should count, but I'm not sure I agree. If you rely on the souls dropped from occasional max-level players, but the only reason those players exist is because of dragon-head glitch or save-file hacking (etc...), then you're essentially relying on the illegitimate playstyle of others to benefit yourself. Almost like having someone drop you a stockpile of duped items and saying you 'earned' them...

If we could be sure that all or even most near-max-level players you were invading got there legitimately, I would feel different, but you can bet that the vast majority cheated to get there. Using others' cheating as a stepping-stone would taint the process for me.

All that being said, I'm also skeptical of OP's plan. With the absurd amount of souls this requires, I'd argue that the only realistic way this can be done is if it is done the quickest, most-efficient way. Relying on souls you get while doing a more casual playthrough style (not explicitly relying on PvP) would be far from that.

I would argue there's no point at all in going to NG+, let alone NG+6 and above even. One thing not a lot of people seem to be stressing (especially in the linked discussion) is how little of benefit the increased soul drops will be. If you're really only allowing yourself to grind for souls by playing through the game, yes you'll obviously have to/want to keep beating it over and over, but the main problem is that NG+6 souls aren't as high as a lot of people believe them to be.

NG+6 and above souls are exactly 1.25 times that of the NG+ value. That's it. If an NPC drops 4,000 souls in NG+, they drop a measly 5,000 in NG+6. If a boss drops 100k in NG+, they drop 125k in NG+6.

Let's do a bit of math, and even pretend your playthrough started in NG+6 or higher. It costs 1,692,567,156 souls to level up from level 1 to level 713 (you need to be the sorcerer by the way, not deprived... unless you don't care about the highest level possible, only the highest for your chosen class). Assuming you kill all of the bosses in the game in NG+6 and beyond, including DLC, that gives you a total of 2,737,500 souls. Assuming you equip the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring on before each boss drops their souls, that'll be 3,285,000 souls. And lets arbitrarily throw another 115k souls on top, assumed to be gathered during a playthrough, round up nicely to 3,400,000 souls...

This is a pretty generous assumption for souls-yielded-per playthrough, and it'd require 498 playthroughs of the game. Consider that you don't actually start in NG+6, you're looking at maybe having to get to NG+500 or so to pull this off.

Of course the number may drop, depending on how often you do Forest Invasions. Each max-level player killed as a Forest Hunter would be the equivalent to like 1/4th of the souls yielded compared to my assumed 'all bosses w/ silver ring + 115k arbitrary souls', so basically every ~4 or so max-level players killed is one less playthrough you'd have to do. Without explicitly planning on that being your main method and trying to 'play through' the game as you do some Forest Hunter, I'm sure you're still looking at reaching >NG+450 to pull this off.

Are you sure you're willing to do all that? I believe I have an easier solution, one I don't think was mentioned in the linked topic, that I would consider completely legitimate...

I would do this with a partner. Don't bother going to NG+. Pick a location with low-traffic, like the bridge to Ceaseless Discharge (both players need Ceaseless alive), but have at least one player progress to the Chasm of the Abyss so they can farm for humanity easily if you get invaded by strangers enough and killed and need to reverse-hollow again.

Player invades the other, perhaps with Red Sign Soapstone. The invader kills themself quickly by running off the cliff. The host is awarded 50% of the souls it cost the other player to reach their current level from their previous one. Do this 2-3 more times. Then switch who hosts so the other player can receive souls the same way, the same amount of times. Level up together.

If you do this over and over, you'd be sure you're not benefitting from souls from a max-level player who cheated to have that many-- you know for sure your partner is leveling legit as well. Plus it's reliable, instead of relying on finding random max-level hosts and having to win over and over.

This would also take a very long time, with something like several-thousand total invasions/suicides total between you and your partner. Still, it'd be a hell of a lot faster and easier than playing to around NG+500.

Good luck!

edit: My math didn't take into account souls yielded from consumed boss souls. That would reduce the number of needed playthroughs, but not by a lot. And also pray that you never lose a bloodstain between leveling up from level 700 to 701, and around there. That would be a MAJOR, major setback, and something that would probably happen every now and again to any player in NG+6, no matter how good you are.

I think Dark Souls is past the point where I can reasonably avoid a character who isn't legit (see, mega mule, Book of the Guilty, and the old dragonhead/bb glitches) that being said, I don't plan on doing too much invading throughout my time on this character. It's mostly just a fun lil diversion to spend my time doing when I can't really think of much else to do.

Understandable!

I'm voicing some concern and doubt, however I don't mean to come across as too discouraging like some people in the linked topic. Just wanted to focus on the logic and practicality of doing this, but don't mean to be negative about it.

Without planning on doing many invasions, then you would be going the route of reaching ~NG+500 to get this done.

And for the love of god don't ever lose your bloodstain at higher levels! Buy several rings of sacrifice every playthrough from Oswald. To get from level 709 to 710, you're looking at clearing roughly three NG+6+ cycles without losing your souls along the way to afford the cost of leveling up.

Although tedious, the fastest single-player way is probably to get to NG+, and just repeatedly overkill fire tempest the phalanx guys in painted world, using something like this:

http://mmdks.com/4iws

Armor other than avarice is optional. You want some poise so you can cast tempest though.

1st run would then be a pyro run, which is actually not that hard to do. 18 faith to avoid spending money on bones or having to go purchase them after 99 runs.

Then you just run up to the phalanx on NG+ and burn them, over and over, homeward out. Dex is the important first stat to max, just to make it slightly faster.

This would still take a painfully unrealistic amount of time to get max SL, but less than ~500 playthroughs lol. Maybe once you get high level THEN you boost with a friend. At first this will provide more souls.

That's why he has to record. So we can see what it's like to lose millions of souls at once.

I'd record but...yeah no recording stuff :c

Maybe I'll post crappy milestone pics taken via a cell phone or something

Cheating people in the Forest? Not possible. The vast majority of the people I invade (after 1,000s of invasions) are there ganking and are looking for a dirty fight. Go there, fight any way you can to win (other than save editing).

Even as a Catbro, I was looking for the host to fight dirty. It made my victories soooo sweet. I would get disappointed (or even upset) if the host was looking for an honor duel. If I kept invading them, I would block these honor duelers - not because I didn't like them, but I just didn't want to have an honorable duel.

IMO, in the forest, it is completely ethical to gank, since that is what the majority of people want.

So, go there and get some good souls, without guilt.

Cheating people in the Forest? Not possible. The vast majority of the people I invade (after 1,000s of invasions) are there ganking and are looking for a dirty fight. Go there, fight any way you can to win (other than save editing).

I believe what retro is saiyan is that most higher levels didn't actually get their souls/gear legit. They got it through Dragonhead, Bottomless Box, Mega Mule, Save Editing, the works. And therefore, any kill I would make on said illegitimate players would cause my character to no longer be legitimate as well due to the souls being well....tainted.

That's exactly right. I'm not concerned about tactics or playstyles in the Forest, just that if you rely on getting lots of souls from killing max or near-max-level players, that means you're relying on a general 'support system', of sorts, that was only made possible through the community cheating for you. Not even the Mega Mule gets you anywhere near level 700, so those are basically all dragon-head glitchers or maybe save editors.

I don't see any problem with getting lucky and getting a bunch of souls this way in a casual playthrough, though if I was challenging myself to get to max level legitimately, I don't think I would allow it.

I look at it this way-- if you wanted to get to max level without cheating, and had a friend who save edited to get to max level, and then just invaded him/her over and over to get their souls, would that be legitimate? I think most would agree "no", because one of you had to cheat to make it work. The same is true if you're doing it with a stranger. Perhaps it's more noble, because it's less intentional, but I still feel that if the person rewarding lots of souls is only doing so because they cheated, then the whole process is tainted.

I might feel different if there wasn't a way to avoid it, but like I said you could level up with a partner and give each other souls as hosts (instead of the invader getting the souls). It's less challenging in the sense that you don't have to put up a fight, but it's legitimate grinding using in-game mechanics without bugs/ cheats exploited by anyone involved.

LOL. Got it. Sorry for my soap boxing about the forest.