SL 1 Run Guide & Tips

You can ask admin, or mod for a sticky if you want.

I won't, because I think that SL1 runs, while popular, are a thing of little interest to the most people playing Dark Souls.
Nor do I think that my tips are usefull to everyone, because I played my SL1 quite specifically and made this thread accordingly. There might be people using different methods that I didn't use and the thread would be of little help to them.

This is great mate, I doubt I will play through the game at Level 1 as right now I want to use my SL5 PvP build, but I will certainly use this thread if I change my mind in the future!

Thank you.

I haven't done SL 5 myself, but I'm sure you can use at least some of the tips from this thread for that as well.

On NPC summons, most of them can be useful (beatrice is too slow vs 4kings):

- Solaire can solo a garg, making a relatively easy fight even easier as you can avoid 1v2.
- Because you can stunlock quelag with basically anything by hitting her torso, doing that + summoning mildred = easy win, even if you yourself have only a +5 weapon and a completely unupgraded bow
- Gaping dragon is easy even with minimal gear like reinforced club +5.  This allows you to delay grinding for upgrades entirely until chunks.  Bringing 2 phantoms into this fight makes it unnecessarily trivial (solaire, lautrec)
- Obviously tarkus is excellent as a summon.
- Solaire is useful again against O&S.  He can distract them while you beat on O, and while super S's buffed hp is kind of annoying, pillar trap + xbow bolts will work fine.
- Beatrice is very useful against moonlight butterfly, unlike 4kings.  As long as you stand near it she'll spam it to death.  She will solo this fight easily if you don't eat the attacks w/o blocking them and die.
- While utterly unnecessary, Leeroy is helpful vs Pinwheel.  Note that there is a green shard en route to vamos, so you can get a fire weapon very early in the game by unlocking vamos shortcut, killing pinwheel, and using the souls to buy shards + upgrade a weapon to fire path.
- +15 xbow in hypermode with any npc summon is lulzy.  If you do this with sanctus on your back with the PW cursed trick and heavy bolts you can get some easy results, but even just keeping distance and spamming +15 light xbow heavy bolts will carry you through most boss fights, including many in NG+ iterations.

I didn't mention NPC summons, just like I didn't mention the option to summon another player (no matter how unlikely). SL 1 is a challenge. Because of that, I see it as something one should do alone, without help from other players and NPCs alike.

You're completely right about the Light Crossbow though.

im glad i wasnt the only one who spent countless hours in team sneak in MGO lol, i miss it....

All those fine memories of being Vamp in MM and making the enemy team stand outside in the rain.
 

Sentiel wrote:Thank you.

I haven't done SL 5 myself, but I'm sure you can use at least some of the tips from this thread for that as well.

Sure did, I had a read through your tips for the Four Kings, and after a couple of tries I finally beat them! I used the Lightning Falchion +5 and Ascended Pyromancy Flame +5. I was mainly trying to dodge their attacks as I had no chance with blocking as my Shield, Heater Shield +15 has just 30% Magic resistance.

Anyways, like I mentioned before great write up, I'm sure it will help many people

I just finished my first SL1 run the other day. Half the game in a couple hours. It was a real struggle for me when I first went into it and had to get people here to help me as phantoms -- mostly for Ornstein and Smough. I left it for half a year, 'cause I got too stressed. But after a NG+7 run, it was really cake going back into it -- I got used to being one-shotted by every enemy. So I quickly ran through the last half of the bosses solo, first try, until Gwyn. Gwyn gave me lots of trouble, and I feel that I'm decent at parrying. Maybe it was just the intimidation factor.

My strategy for him was finally using the Balder Shield, since it let me tank a lot more hits with its stability. I got off a few parries on the final attempt, which gave me time to throw in the few great combustion blasts (4) it required to take him down with Power Within, Dusk Crown, and Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring. I found it much more reliable than the Hornet Ring parrying approach.