Dark Souls II - Grinding to the Max Level in Things Betwixt

first some clarification there's two versions of dark souls 2 the original release and scholar of the first sin there were also two different versions of dark souls 1 but that didn't really matter for the previous challenge for the purposes of this video i'm going to use scholar of the first sin as it's the most recent and arguably most complete version of the game and the one namco bandai intends for you to purchase most of what i say can apply to either version regardless but it should be known that if you pre-order dark souls 2 original release you get some special weapons and shields which could slightly modify the route you take to do this challenge but we'll get to that later we're going to start by ignoring everything and running straight to the old ladies name your character and choose your class unlike dark souls 1 dark souls 2 stats are actually properly balanced meaning you can reach the max level of 838 with any of the classes for my case i'll be using the cleric because as with the first video i'm looking for the best case scenario and they start with the highest soul level of 14 meaning we need to gain the least number of souls using it if you were wanting this challenge to take as long as possible obviously you'd want to choose a deprived as they start at soul level 1. if you want my personal recommendation of what class you should choose i'd say either a warrior since they start off with a shield meaning you could skip one of our actions later on also worth considering is the knight since they have the highest vigor making them somewhat more forgiving of mistakes or the explorer since they have the highest adaptability of any of the starting classes making dodging a bit more viable i think it's unlikely that you'll be able to skip a shield even with their adaptability in mind but i'm getting ahead of myself speaking of adaptability though as a cleric we're going to have the next to lowest adaptability of any of the starting classes besides the bandit this isn't too much of an issue as dodging won't be something we're necessarily going to do much but just bear that in mind on the plus side we get a healing miracle which is very handy if you happen to lose a lot of health and can get one off but moving on grab a bonfire ascetic as your starting gift and exit character creation one nice thing about dark souls 2 is that whenever you rest at a bonfire your weapon is repaired so long as it hasn't broken this is handy as we won't have to worry about farming weapons like we did in dark souls 1. since we're cleric to reach max level we're going to need 407 million 396 4448 souls yes you heard that right 407 million with an m that's not too terrible all things considered that's like one-fourth of dark souls 1's requirement there's a lot of preliminary souls we can get though and we've got a lot to do so strap in folks this is going to be a long one pick up the torch and the soul of the lost undead for 200 souls we're going to go to the first fog gate on the left lighting all the sconces on the way i'm just going to avoid enemies like i did in the first video but kill them if you want i'm going to continue on until the end where i'm going to kick down the ladder and ignore dinah and telo for now drop down to the below ledge and collect the soul of a nameless soldier for 800 souls now we're done and things betwixt for now so here's the thing dark souls 2 is kind of unique starting in this game and only this game from software made it so that after killing enemies a certain number of times they'll begin to despawn making this challenge impossible unless we bend the rules a bit we have to go to majula why because in majula lies the company of champions which makes it so that enemies no longer despawn i know i know i don't like it either but that's just how it is now since we have to go to majula anyway i'm going to make an executive decision and say everything in majula is free reign so long as we don't leave this main hub with that in mind we've got a few things to do here first we're going to collect another soul of a nameless soldier and pop it for an additional 800 souls now go speak to maulin maulin sells some shields which is quite handy as we're going to need one by the silver eagle kite shield it has a 90 damage reduction for physical attacks once you've gotten everything you want we're going to kill him mullen drops the cell dora set all of which increases the number of souls we get by a certain percentage with all the armor worn we get a 22.5 boost definitely worthwhile we'll also get 900 souls from him next i'm going to go speak to crestfallen sultan he'll give us a ring called the blue seal if we join the blue sentinels this ring increases our hp by 3 percent a minor increase but why not right now you have two choices you can either kill sultan to get the ring of steel protection or die 100 times and speak to him to obtain it for the sake of brevity and for more souls i'm going to kill him for it getting 994 souls while i'm at it the ring of steel protection gives us a defense boost of 50. i'm also going to get the estus flask from the emerald herald and upgrade it while i'm here now i'll finally go and enter the company of champions now we're going to return to things betwixt go to the rightmost fog gate go ahead and light up all the sconces you can get to ending with the one in the middle structure now you're probably thinking to yourself i know fino he's a stand-up guy he's above engaging in some trickery well you're wrong go ahead and drop your fps down to 20. jump over this ledge hey look at that no fragrant branch of your required light up the sconce do this jump to avoid the basilisk pit go through the fog door go over here light up the sconce kick down the bridge and light up this final sconce now we've got a black phantom to fight tease it with gravity for 3 107 souls speaking of cheesing with gravity lure these two ogres over to the wooden bridge you kicked down bait out the backslam or the butt slam and they'll fall right off granting you 1243 souls each it should be noted that the ogre counts as a special enemy meaning that even with the company of champions they won't be respawning that black phantom we killed also won't be returning until we use the bonfire ascetic now go down and fight the pursuer hope your parry game is on point [Music] kill the pursuer get 7458 souls go to the opening area of things betwixt we'll run over to the ogre up the hidden path and kill him it might take a bit longer than you're used to this is because the company of champions grants enemies more hp and around 20 damage resistance luckily they're a very easy enemy to kill doing so will give us another 1243 souls as well as the stone ring this reduces enemy poise i don't think it really affects what we're going to be doing but how you have two extra ring slots i don't see a reason not to use it now we're going to drop down the waterfall and grab the small smooth and silky stone then go back to the bonfire and use the bonfire aesthetic the bonfire ascetic puts the zone of whatever bonfire you use it at into new game plus so while enemies will now be harder they're also going to drop more souls per kill it also replaces any items you picked up so go ahead and grab the soul of a lost undead for another 200 souls for things betwixt the ascetic is also going to spawn a few black phantoms which will be very useful let's go back and kill the ogre again now he'll drop us 2486 souls jump down the waterfall again for three smooth and sulky stones go back to the bonfire if you continue ahead you'll see a new black phantom with a crossbow spawned on the bridge because we're in new game plus go up and kill it an extra 1988 souls nice this black phantom also unfortunately won't respond so no farming this guy light up all the sconces a second time killed the black phantom again 6215 souls now go kill the two ogres on the beach again 2 486 souls each pursuer again perry's ass 14 916 souls climb up the ladder to dinah and tilo using the stones you collected you have a chance of getting the soul of a proud knight which will grant you 2 000 souls each as this is under the guise of this being the best case scenario we'll say you're extraordinarily lucky and you get it all four times for a total of 8 000 souls realistically though you'll have to save scum to do this now get the soul of a nameless soldier for another 800 souls wow that was a lot of setup now it's time for what i've been putting off the actual grinding rest at the bonfire go back towards the starting area and upon passing this threshold two black phantoms will spawn these phantoms will continue to spawn indefinitely since we're in the company of champions run past them and go up to this falconer these falconers are also newly spawned because of the bonfire aesthetic anyway lure them back and over to this cliff there's a tree here that you can just walk around hold the dual wield button and dual wield your offhand item in this case it's the silver eagle kite shield the enemies have a hard time getting around this tree once they're around it and attacking use the shield to protect yourself from their attacks and when the time is right bump them off you can get the black phantoms and usually just one of the falconers the other falconers usually get bored and run back occasionally you'll get a second one but usually not in fact i've only ever had one time where the second falconer sticks around so i'm just gonna say that you get one falconer doing this i know it's best case scenario but this is so extremely rare that i'm not comfortable including the second one into the figure so the two black phantoms and the one falconer all together that's 1540 souls per run so now we have to time it before you do your attempts make sure to open the two doors to the old lady's hut doing so will save you time as they'll stay open as long as you don't die we're going to run past the two black phantoms and get the attention of the falconer then it's simply a matter of not getting hit as we head towards the tree be careful especially of the falconer's falcon as it is capable of one-shotting you now that we're at the tree we just need to knock the enemies off you'll probably have to bait a couple of attacks from the black phantoms then you can knock them off it's possible that the falconer will fall off of his own accord after a couple of attacks but if not go ahead and knock him off with your shield as well after that we just need to run back to the bonfire doing all of this will take about a minute and a half but that's about it now as with the previous video it's time for the math 407 million 396 448 souls minus 56.65 souls from everything we did prior to the grind that's 407 million 340 383 souls every run of the grind section we do will give us 1540 souls multiply that by 40 and that gives us the number of souls per hour which is sixty one thousand six hundred so dividing four hundred seven million three hundred forty thousand three hundred eighty three by sixty one thousand six hundred we get six thousand six hundred thirteen hours to complete this challenge with rounding that's a little under 276 days 40 weeks 9 months and a little over three-fourths of a year wow compared to dark souls 1 that's not too bad right now granted that's still 9 months of constant gameplay if we assumed you did it 8 hours per day that's 2.3 years that's pretty bad but nowhere near dark souls 1's figure of 55 years i could actually see someone possibly taking this challenge on someone not me well that's about it dark souls 2 turned out to be a lot more trouble than i thought originally i thought it was just going to be a matter of grinding from the start but once i realized we'd have to go to majula and that there was a way to jump over that ledge it opened up a lot more possibilities for better for worse thanks once again to grind god and illusory wall for being an inspiration for this video i'd also like to thank gravy zombie for helping me out with some testing for this video he's a lot more knowledgeable about dark souls 2 than i am so that was a big help alright well that wraps this one up i hope you enjoyed thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: FenoTheFox

Views: 179,228

Rating: 4.8622689 out of 5

Keywords: Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls II, Scholar of the First Sin, Scholar, First, Sin, SOTFS, Grinding, Maximum, Max, Level, Things Betwixt, Things, Betwixt, FenoTheFox, Feno, Fox

Id: evxOV6bSEho

Length: 12min 50sec (770 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2020