Bad Strategy

Ignoring times you have run into a room guns blazing, which I'm sure everyone has done at some point or another, what are the worst strategic decisions you have made, or the worst strategies you have adopted.

Here is my latest:

After losing a pile of humanity as a result of an invader killing me I sought revenge. Mind you not just losing it in a straight up battle, but rather runnng to challenge Nito with a Phantom we new we had been invaded. So I am keeping an eye open, but assuming they will probably come looking for us. As we, my phantom compadre graciously in the lead, pass through the tunnnel that leads to the bone towers on the ledge along with the giant skeleton archer a thought occurs to me: a sneaky invader might wait for us to go through that tunnel and then attack from behind. Another thought occurs, I should turn around and look for said sneaky type invader. Unfortunately, is was roughly between the words "turn" and "around" of my previous thought that the invader revealed that they apparently had come to this conclusion previously and were slightly ahead of me in determining this to be an effective strategy. So, said duplicitous, fog ring wearing, invading phantom proceeded to separate me from my life, from behind, while my phantom amigo turned to me as if to say "look at me, I am helping you, I just crushed that bone tower, I will pave a path of destruction in your honor... oh...look at you, that looks like it hurts... so that is where that devious phantom is...well... see you later....".

I awoke at the bonfire. angry and frustrated, thinking I can use my super darkmoon powers to get revenge. Afterall I knew the invader was a sinner, and I knew I could invade sinners, so it was only a matter of time before I found that underhanded vermin. But this required a special treatment. Something very irrational and not well thought out, so I switched over to the great lord great sword with the Darkhand as my secondary weapon. Thinking I could stunlock with the sword, switch to the dark hand and grab some humanity. One by one would recover the 21 humanity that invading scoundrel had cost me. I think I realized it was a stupid strategy at the time but the thought of that pile of humanity vanishing into nothingness on the floor of Nito's bedroom did not have me thinking clearly. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for the offending invader I never got paired with them again. As I have no doubt I would have succumbed to their treacherous ways numerous times.

Not the most exciting conclusion, but I think a clear indication of poor strategic planning.

Nice. First time I fought Havel I treated him like all the other enemies to that point and tried to block then counter attack. After the attempted block there was no me left to counter attack.

I tried to kill Havel with Pyromancy when I first played... As I Pyromancer, I learned that blocking was not good with a cracked round shield.

You think that's bad Acid? I tried to parry him

I parried Havel... Dark hand. Parties don't work with Pyromancy glove with fireballs only, thou

I also tried to block Havel. Other bad ideas included using my Life hunt on Nito and killing myself and attempting hit for hit with the Demon Firesage

Picking the black firebombs instead of the Masterkey as gift on my first playthrough... Not so bad because it forced me to go through every area in the game, but this was pre-patch when you couldn't buy the masterkey. So if you didn't pick it as gift, you couldn't get it... Not bad on a first playthrough, but very annoying when you're on NG++++(etc) and you still can't skip anything.

Levelling up my res to 24 on a SL 60 toon because I didnt knwo it was useless and i wanted to make a tank.

I invaded in the Forest, and bow to this guy and his phantom. You'd actually be suprised, because usually people bow back. Not this time. The phantom runs over to me and backstabs me. That dosen't sound so bad, does it? Except that I thought that it would be a good idea to bow again. Maybe he couldn't see me the first time? Backstab. Okay, one more time, because I'm impulsive. Backstab, and I die.

Yeah, bowing isn't the best strategy whilst fighting gankers. Doh!

I'll never forget my first fight against Ceasless Discharge when I didn't know his pitfall gimmick. I had just enough health to survive one of his attacks, so my strategy involved deliberately taking a hit and when I got up I would have just enough time to poke his tentacle and Estus once before he got off another attack, so literally chose to get slammed into the ground over and over until I had whittled down his HP. It remains to this day the only time I've ever used more than 15 Estus in a single battle and resorted to Humanity for healing purposes in PvE (outside of being a co-oping phantom).

Thinking that the pyromancer class would play like the royal class from demon's souls.

Did give me a chance to learn how to properly kill enemies one at a time till I got my favorite weapon.

That dang titanite Demon on the bridge in Lost Iz, I would never block any of his attacks because my plan was just to force my will on him like I did on the other Titabite Demons. So what does he do? One shots me with that jumping slam or knocks me off the bridge over and over. Reaperfan I feel your pain I did the same exact thing, after I found out about that gimmick, I didn't know whether to congratulate myself or put my head down in disgust.

"Hey Befowler stand back and watch. I only have on light armor and a weak weapon, and that DM just buffed his weapon, and ran into the poison water with his Iron Ring on. I don't have one, so I'll just try to roll in the water. He has all the boulder guys and the bugs by him, but I bet I can take him."

I may be paraphrasing my last words a bit, I bet Befowler remembers that Abomination of a decision.

Lol I wil lmention for Viral - "Hey Yukon, lets run straight at the hellkite, itll be fun."

"but he'll kill me!"

Trying to undead rapport a black phantom skeleton dog. I thought, cool, maybe I can get one of the black phantoms to fight the other black phantoms. Not a success.

bmurn wrote:Trying to undead rapport a black phantom skeleton dog. I thought, cool, maybe I can get one of the black phantoms to fight the other black phantoms. Not a success.

I think you should have tried it on other skeletons first. You might have found a better grasp that it doesn't work

Yeah. It was really my 5th or 6th attempt to get by the bp skeleton dogs in the tomb. Not sure if you have been gravelorded there, but at the top of the ramp leading to the second bonfire one bp spawns and then another one if you continue down the ramp from the first, and then finally there is a third as you round the corner that leads to the hole with the ladder in it. So after trying straight on melee I started mixing it up. Tried force (don't have TWoG) to knock them off the ledges and couldn't get that to work. Tried kicking them off to no avail. Then tried undead rapport on a whim. Finally started using Firestorm to blast the first one off the ledge and then the second one. Then got the third one to chase me back towards the bonfire and as it came up the ramp I jumped down behind it and took off running for the Pinwheel room, hoping the gravelord was there. Of course as soon as I made it to that room after 1/2 hour struggling with the bps I got the "disasters are gone" message before I could find the gravelord sign.

I have been gravelorded and gravelorded everywhere with my companion. See?

https://soulswiki.forumotion.com/t3514-gravelord-black-phantom-catalog-aka-cursebook

Look from page 1 to 6 or 7.. you will see some gravelorded areas and picture we have taken... as well as some videos from others.

I have looked at that thread on occassion. Good stuff.

You may know the answer to this then. While you are grave lording can you be invaded by a dark moon?

The entire time I was working on getting past the bp skeleton dogs, I was trying to invade as a dark moon as well. Hoping that by random chance I would connect with the same gravelord that cursed my world.

Also, where do you like to camp out when you gravelord in the tomb of the giants?

If you have sinned before, you can get invaded by a Darkmoon. Of course, Darkmoon invasions that are outside Anor Londo are pretty rare, even if you have sinned a good amount.

Where do I like to camp while gravelording? The skeleton sarcophagus, where the large divine ember is. Where I do it, you will have to find out yourself. I possibly infected you, but I do not know your soul level.

As long as we are on this topic. Does gravelording count as sinning? Do you receive additional orbs (can't remember what the gravelording ones are called) if your victims are killed by the bp, or only if you kill them when they invade you.

I'm sl 120.

That is a nasty place to camp. The only time I go down there is to grab the ember and die.