Special Bonuses

cloudyeki wrote:I think it's the damage the lava deals that's the difference

Nope, it's the same.

WyrmHero wrote:Ublug, I tested Great Chaos Fireball with 0 and 16 humanity. I can't seem to notice any difference in the number of lava trails it leaves. Maybe with 99 humanity one can see the difference.

I've never done a side-by-side comparison, so I had to test it to be sure. I know they don't do more damage, but I thought there were more lava that stayed longer on the ground. I tested a character with chaos covenant +3 vs a non covenant member, both with and without humanity, alive and hollow. I could see no significant difference, so it looks like I've just been imagining things while using them.

Their descriptions originally said that damage scaled with humanity, and the fireball also said it had a bigger blob. But those descriptions must have been removed with a patch, instead of implementing a scaling system.

I'm also a bit surprised about the numbers for the black knight sword, it's only supposed to be a 20% increase/bonus.

It's almost 55% higher.

WyrmHero wrote:It's almost 55% higher.

I just did some more quick tests because of this.
I tested a faith build with 50fth, divine rapier +9 (122/235) and occult rapier +4 (130/229). I mostly did backstabs and ripostes in the tests to get high damage numbers. The '110' light/dark modifier only amounts to 10% as far as I can tell.

• The damage against normal enemies (hollows, serpent men, darkmoon npc's) showed a 1-3 points difference between the two weapons.
  
• Against skeletons the divine rapier did +10%. I think it was increased for ghosts as well, but those can't be backstabbed so the numbers were a bit low to tell for sure.
  
• Divine did nothing against darkwraiths, was quite surprised about this.
  
• Against black knights and gwyn the occult rapier did +10%.
  
• I should have tested occult on silver knights as well, but my anor londo was dark.

I'll probably make two different builds to get both the physical and magical damage of the rapiers to the exact same amount, then try them against different enemies/bosses.

Depends. Some divine and occult weapons at the start, for example the dragon dagger, dark hand, and the special divine weapons do more than 10%, reaching past 110 in either divine or occult.

Yes ublug I thought about occult yesterday. From lets you have an occult club in Anor Londo, I'm sure it does more damage to silver knights, giants and even O&S. Test it!!!!!

I re-tested ghosts, and I don't think they are affected by divine. Painting guardians were not affected by either. This character is at the end of ng+ with only gwyn left, most of the npc's are also dead, so it's not ideal for testing.
I was planning on testing Andre as well, to establish if the game mechanics sees him as part of the gods and their kin. Just have to upgrade a few more shields first.

I did try the dark hand against gwyn (130 dark), but it has that two-part riposte animation, and only the first attack shows the damage. It did around 300-350 dmg total. I have also killed super-ornstein with the default occult club you find in anor londo before, and it was surprisingly easy, so there could be something to it.

Am I going to have to hit Andre with an Occult club, give my numbers, then run like a mad man?

I tried Andre with no effect, but I also found out that you can parry/riposte him
His corpse also stays behind. Is it only him, eingyi, and the two undead merchants who leaves a corpse if they are killed?

Also tried on titanite demon, moonlight butterfly (special soul), pinwheel, bell gargoyles, taurus demon, quelaag, iron golem, smough, and most of the normal enemies (including npcs and hollows), but no difference between occult and divine for any of them.

The list so far:
Divine: Skeletons, Harpies.
Occult: Black Knights, Silver Knights, Ornstein (+super), Gwyndolin, Gwyn.

I think I've misinterpreted something on the list. I'm fairly sure that the existence of parrying, despite being difficult at times, is common knowledge?

Rockstar2112 wrote:I think I've misinterpreted something on the list. I'm fairly sure that the existence of parrying, despite being difficult at times, is common knowledge?

Yeah, i copy pasted that, I'll remove it

I did some more occult vs divine tests. I have Depths, Upper Blighttown, Ash Lake and Izalith left. I forgot to try against Super Smough and the miracle-sentinels, most of the other enemies and bosses have been tested.

The list so far:
Divine: Skeletons (all types), Harpies.
Occult: Black Knights, Silver Knights, Ornstein (+super), Gwyndolin, Gwyn.

The results were not as expected, I assumed a lot more enemies would be weak to either type. As it stands now I really can't see the need for two types of Faith based magic weapons, unless their existence is for Lore purposes only. Not even Darkwraiths, Four Kings or Nito were affected by divine.
I'm pretty sure the Greatsword of Artorias (true) does increased damage against Darkwraiths, and possibly Four Kings, but that sword may be the only one that does. The other blessed swords (Grant, Crescent Axe, Astora's Sword) might differ as well, but I don't think I'll bother testing after these depressing results.

So same magic AR from occult and divine does same damage to enemies??? Did the two weapons have the same magic AR????

They were close enough, 5 points apart or there about. They usually differ with 2-3 damage, but you can easily see when a 10% difference occurs, since that usually amounts to 20-30 points difference, or 50-100 for backstab/riposte.
It's not only the magic damage either, it's a bonus for the total AR. We call them 'divine' and 'occult' because of the upgrade paths, but 'Light' and 'Dark' would be more fitting. The silver knight spear, priscillas dagger and dark hand all have a divine/occult damage modifier without dealing any magic damage.

gsoa has a high divine modifier at 140, once saw a vid that stated that that meant a 40% boost against appropriate enemies... unfortunately it'll be hard to test div and Occ modifiers in pvp... unless can some peopl do testing on each other via rss?

A few others:

-- drop attacks count as criticals and the damage is therefore affected by weapon type and hornet ring (I tested this on Taurus demon but it seems to work on players too)

-- Projectiles to the head cause a "bleeding" headwound with a damage increase and stagger effect. This is most easily accomplished with aimed arrows, but can be done with crossbow bolts, throwing daggers, and even certain spells such as soul arrow. It works on many humanoid enemies besides humans, including Anor Londo flying demons and Demon Ruin demons. Enemies can actually be backed up and driven off ledges by repeated staggers. This is true even if the range is extreme and no damage is actually being done.

-- It is possible, albeit very difficult, to parry some spells including Force/WotG, resulting in little or no damage and no stagger or other hit effect. There is actually a graphical representation that occurs with a successful parry in the form of a glow along the edge of the shield, suggesting this is implemented and not a bug.

-- You can parry with your bare hands

-- A crystal soul spear (CSS) appears to completely destroy poise with a successful unblocked hit, with no apparent poise cap. In other words, any character struck by a full, unblocked CSS will stagger regardless of poise and is then at risk of immediate stunlock with any weapon. I've used this many times against full havels/giants farmers in the forest. I have not tested it on full havels/giants + wolf ring.

Just thought I should mention, the best time to throw a dagger is when someone is about to swing. When a toon swings they put their head forwards for most weapons, meaning you can easily score a head shot with a dagger staggering them.

throwing knife damage is around 35 on unarmored players, poison daggers are slightly less. the egg head inflicts 10 damage to someone in full giants armor, egg head doesn't seem to make me weaker to fire.... (haven't noticed a difference and i've been flamed plenty.)

You can also use throwing daggers as a way to detect the true outline of a creature model for combat purposes. Often if you throw a dagger at something, it will hit and stick in the air a few inches (but sometimes a few feet) from their actual visible body. Where the knife sticks seems to generally be the border of the contact area where a weapon will hurt them. While it is pretty useless and largely identical to the visual outline against regular sized mobs, against larger bosses it can sometimes give you a bit of extra space as you can stand off that much more and still hit them with thrust attacks or spells. Some examples include Queelag and Smough. This can also work with arrows sometimes, but I find the knives preferable because they are easier to see after impact, are shorter so the point of impact is easier to detect, and seem to stick longer.

Couple of other weird ones:

-- You can kick and stagger the ghosts in New Londo when you have a transient curse on. Haven't tested it w/o being cursed.

-- If you co-op on Gwyndolin, you'll get a separate cutscene of yourself as a ghost entering his fog gate, after the main cutscene showing the host.

-- There are certain areas in the game where thrown weapons will go much greater distance than normal. These appear to be intentionally coded to encourage the use of such weapons, typically firebombs. The Burg platform is an obvious one, but there are also several spots along the broken parapets overlooking Gaping Dragon where you can also throw a firebomb very far (you can also hit Gaping with arrows from up there as well). I suspect the Firebomb Giant tower in Sen's is another but haven't tested it yet.

Dunno if this counts but using the jump attack off a ledge puts you into the plunging attack animation.

So, I've been doing some testing with the GsoA, cursed and true.

As it turns out, if using the base stats the Cursed variant actually will out damage the true version. The reason for this is that the cursed version deals more physical, and just physical damage. The true version deals less physical, but also magic, so it does split damage. I've also tested the weapon without the proper, stats, 30 STR and 20 Dex, 20 Int, but only 12 Faith. Without the requirements met, the cursed version still deals the same damage while the true version loses its magic damage. So, it only removes the damage that is based on the stats, meaning if you are going for just parries and ripostes with the cursed versions you never need to get any int or faith. As I have tested using just BS, I can get over 500 damage from a BS of the cursed version, while the true version does around 400 damage with a BS. I tested this on Silver Knights, regular no NG+. You can still riposte with it, as well if you use the R2 it still knocks down enemies even if you don't have the Faith/Int, probably even if you don't have the Dex, though the damage will be gone with the dex. I've managed to go around areas easily with the cursed Variant, noting that I can kill a Giant Skeleton in one hit with the R2 of the cursed version. It knocks them back too, so I'm going to be testing it on more enemies before bringing my faith up, as I hate farming and would rather test weapons haha.

Yes, you still get your weapon knocked away with every hit, but when I deal 300+ damage with every hit, it's almost not noticed, I just kill things too easily. Because of this, the cursed version might actually be a very good early game weapon, as you can deal good damage, knock enemies back, riposte and BS for good damage with it, and only need 24 STR and 18 Dex, less STR of course if two handing.

I learned today (thanks to Acidic Cook), that the Crystal Ring Shield damage scales depending on the right hand weapon, and if it's magic-based, it will have more bonus.

Edit: http://darksoulswiki.wikispaces.com/Crystal+Ring+Shield

That's already on the Wiki I'm pretty sure.

Yeah

Yep, Wyrm and I Confirmed. At the lower SL's with the GsoA you are better off using the cursed. While the AR is lower, it does pure physical damage, which is enough to cause a change. With Wyrm in the full Favour set, I saw a 40-50 damage difference when hitting him, while my Cursed version has 40-50 less AR, depending on if I two hand it or not. It's logical, I just wanted to double check and make sure is all.