It's really terrible how hardly anyone is reading the OP. Shame on y'all.
Blueblood Sword.
That's literally all you have to know.
While this at least fits the "knight PvE" theme, it's also terrible advice.
- First, it's not "literally all you have to know". In fact, it explains nothing. The Blueblood sword is a late-game weapon, meant for NG+ essentially. By the time OP can obtain it, they'll have likely played through most of the game.
- Second, you need a very specific build to make good use of it. Which is... what the OP is asking:
help plan a build. The BBS requires specific stat investment or it's literally unusable.
- It scales with Luck so you also need to invest lots of points in Luck.
- And even at bare minimum stat requirements, it actually kind of sucks unless you invest in the magic stat (almost as much as in the Luck stat) to combine it with Light Weapon, then it's very strong.
- And you need the insanity catalyst to make good use of that spell too.
So yeah. You literally advised him to get the weapon around which it's the most complicated and difficult to create a good build for, without saying anything about it. Tch!
- What level do you generally end up at by the end of the game?
- What's the easiest upgrade path to max out? I don't want to have to grind for hours to get the materials I need to get my weapon fully upgraded.
- What's the recommended path through the game for beginners?
- How many points should I invest in vitality and endurance?
What kind of knight do you wanna make? If you are using sword-and-board, or a polearm like the mirdan hammer, a faith or strength build is the way to go.
If the game is anything like the original, I'd recommend a faith build. The magic damage from faith-infused weapons is very strong, the HP regen stacks with the Regen ring
and the Adjudicator shield, which will all make the poison swamp a joke. A blessed mirdan hammer or a blessed claymore are very, very good PvE weapons. For a faster weapon, you can use the longsword or knight sword, but it doesn't pack quite the same punch.
1. It's been a while since I only did normal PvE but I'd say 80 or so is probably a good level to end the game at.
2. Regular upgrade paths (using hardstone or sharpstone) is the easiest though it's generally not as good for min-maxing. Quality builds (using Clearstone) is also fairly easy to come by. Mats aren't too rare. Strength builds are also OK: the pure greystone isn't too rare (you can get a free one by trading the Dragon Bone Smasher to Scirvir the Wanderer, IIRC... though then you lose the DBS, but if you're playing a "knight" type, you might not want it anyway). For faith builds, faintstone isn't too bad; you get a free Pure from that lady in the Nexus once your faith reaches a certain level IIRC. Farming for chunks might suck a little bit, but it sucks for every stone, tbh.
3. If you go faith, try to go to 5-1 (Valley of Defilement) as fast as possible to pick up the Blessed Mace. It will be a very decent weapon for the skeletons in 4-1 (Shrine of Storms) and should carry you for a while until you get what you need to upgrade your preferred weapon. I won't go into too much details though because... frankly, the remake change so many things as to make all of this advice useless lol
4. A lot. If you want to wear the full knight armour, pump END early on, or you'll fat-roll. I'd recommend using light gloves/pants until then, tbh, fast roll is always better. In the original you'd cap END at 40, because you stop gaining stamina after that. VIT is good to update until you hit 40-50 or so. For NG and PvE, 35-40 is probably fine. If you go faith you also have access to the miracle Second Chance (you only need 16 faith for it) which revives you once after you die. Very useful spell. But in general, in DeS for melee builds, you want to pump VIT and END comfortably high, then focus on your main "damage" stat, which is, the stat your weapon scales with, so either faith, str, or dex, generally. And then you can ignore almost everything else, maybe raise dex a little to use a weapon that requires it, or something like that, but don't touch it otherwise. For example if you start at 10 dex but want to wield the Mirdan Hammer on a faith or str build, raise dex to 12 but stop there.
As for your other queston: AR and damage are not the same thing. AR is the attack rating of your weapon, but damage is calculated based on that + the enemy's defense/armour. Plus, weapons with magic damage have "split" damage, between physical and magical, and damage is calculated on both the enemy's magic defense and physical defense. So a weapon that has 244 phys AR, might still be decent against an enemy resistant to magic, compared to a weapon that is 150 phys/250 mag (for a total of 400 AR) which might actually hit less.
Hope this makes sense!
Whats the equivalent of Ludwig's Holy Blade?
Asking for a friend.
The Large Sword of Moonlight. It has faith scaling, does 100% magical damage and 0 physical, and bypasses shields (even shields with 100% magical block). It's not a super great weapon tbh, but it has its uses for faith builds I guess.
