Warriors in Dark Souls 2 have such a lame mid-game compared to mages

2026-06-05 19:50 UTC

TLDR: my warrior fully upgraded their main weapon and now face a deficit of titanite chunks to upgrade other weapons, severely limiting my build in time when mages gain several new awesome spells as well as resources to upgrade their pyromancy flame and catalyst. I’m replaying Dark Souls 2 (SotFS) after years of not touching the game and generally not spending much time with Souls-likes. I went for a warrior type, focusing on swords and crossbows. Despite not having access to any magic, I have a blast! Yet, once the early game full of experimentations with weapons and drip fashion reached its’ end and I settled on a claymore +10 and a pretty looking “armor” set, my build became stale. I used up my titanite chunks on the claymore and I can’t gain more since the useless ore merchant can’t sell shit until you are 2 bosses away from winning. I have murakumo +7 and I switch to it sometimes but it’s hard to compete with a fully upgraded claymore. The game throws twinkling titanite to me and I would love to use it on some cool weapon… but there are none! The only special weapon that could fit this build, Drangleic greatsword, is just worse than my claymore in terms of reach and moveset. Maybe it has a bit more damage when it’s fully upgraded but I’d still prefer the more convenient option. Now, there are also boss weapons. Again, there’s only one that actually interests me - the flexile sentinel’s curved greatsword. It’s pretty similar to my murakumo except it weighs more and… that’s it? Stat scaling is a bit different but moveset seems identical. It looks cool though. But I dunno if it’s worth the investment. Are there other interesting boss weapons worth waiting for? I don’t really want to grind for petrified bones… It’s especially aggravating because, when a mage reaches Drangleic castle, they get such a huge upgrade. Great combustion, several fire seeds, Soul greatsword, Firestorm, twinkling titanite for the best catalyst… it’s arguably the best part of the game for casters.

Replies (3)

@eezeebee@lemmy.ca 2026-06-05 21:48

You can farm chunks from the oil hands in Black Gulch

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@djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-06-05 20:21

Well, there’s no reason for you to feel like mages have all the fun on the sidelines. If you’re all the way to Drangleic Castle, you should have access to a Soul Vessel and can freely respec to an Int build if you’d like to try it. Just bring the vessel back to the witches from the start of the game and swap over

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@skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 2026-06-06 00:39

Honestly I just consider everything prior to the DLC areas to be almost pre-game. Whatever +10 you like best is fine for running through the base game, all the really really cool stuff is either a boss weapon or a DLC area item. You could also just try other weapon types. A quality build (STR/DEX focus) has a wide variety of things they can use, most of them only marginally less optimally than a dedicated STR or DEX build, and many of them MORE optimally due to having more scaling stats. Regular old straight swords are considered one of the strongest weapon classes in the game and are great for this. Fist weapons and colossal swords are personal favorites of mine. If you’re getting bored with the claymore I pretty highly recommend upgrading a pair of caestus or claws and just going buck wild with them. Caestus lean toward STR and claws lean toward DEX if you have more of one than the other. But yeah, base game DS2 has plenty of cool stuff, but they kept back all the real prime stuff for the DLCs. Playing Scholar you will have access to these. At the time in base game that Chloanne starts selling infinites of most of the upgrade stones, you’ll still have more than a third of the game left to go, so don’t worry too much about that. Go ahead and burn through the game until you defeat the Watcher/Defender, bone out of Nashandra’s fight and go enjoy some of the best content and armaments in the game before you come back to dunk her back into the Abyss. As far as things you can access right now, though, you have some options. Many of the boss weapons are very cool, if you have a decent stock of Dragon Bones. In no particular order, here’s some things I might recommend based on what I’m reading here. Smelter Sword fucks, just in general, and you can get a second one later for maximum swagger. STR based, and heavy. You can use the single Smelter sword just fine as a quality build but you’re going to need a lot of stats to dual wield them. Arced Sword/Curved Greatsword is largely outclassed by the Warped Sword, which you get from the same Flexile Sentry soul. Warped Sword is largely Dex focused but is just actually the best curved sword in the game IMO, unless you’re doing something silly with Eleum Loyce or the Red Rust swords. Skip Arced though, just use the Murakumo. Note that curved swords replace your kick with a silly backflip-swipe that is useless, I frequently keep a dagger in my second weapon slot for criticals anyway but it’s also useful to switch to it to kick. Many katanas are very strong and easy to use. Jokes about Fromsoft’s subtle propaganda about glorious Nippon steel have been in ready supply for most of the Souls series’ lifetime. DS2 is no exception. Darkdrift is my favorite and is available from Agdayne, but you can really grab almost any of them and have a fine time. Don’t invest in the Chaos Blade, it’s really only for PvP. Do invest in the Washing Pole, it’s ludicrously long and repair powders are easy to get a million of. Try a twinblade! Specifically, try the Red Iron or Stone Twinblade. I don’t think they’re good dueling weapons in PvP but I love them in PvE. Proc bleed like nobody’s business. Both of these ones listed scale better off of STR, but basically all the others are DEX. If you aren’t very high DEX though I’d recommend the Stone, it’s my favorite of the bunch. If you’re really just jonesing for something to spending Twinkling on specifically, the Black Knight weapons are decent targets, as well as the Dragonslayer Crescent Axe is one that I often enjoy. Also, don’t forget to upgrade your armor, as well. Many of the best armor sets require a bunch of Twinklies to upgrade. You’ll want those upgrades before hitting Shulva/Brume/Eleum Loyce. Finally, last note, as someone else said in this thread you can also just take a soul vessel back to the ladies at Things Betwixt and just respec your entire build. Those are limited, but not terribly so, you’ll get probably a dozen of them before everything is over. I used to use them like candy to float points in and out of my health and stamina to equip new and interesting gear, it’s not optimal at all to do that but you really don’t need it to be. You only need as many soul vessels as times you plan to change your mind on your build, and there are still ways to get more if you run out if you want to mess with bonfire ascetics. That’s advanced tech though, don’t mess with those too much. However, do use them to fight the four great soul bosses again and get their NG+ drops. Those souls give you more cool stuff that you may or may not want, but if you don’t want the items just eat them for another 255,000 free souls on top of whatever large amount actually killing the bosses gives. I don’t know how much it is but I think I used to be able to farm up a million souls for the Drangleic gate with like three or four cycles of The Rotten. I’m going to cut this off here, but I have played this game for an unholy number of hours, please, ask me things about my hyperfixation if you have more specific questions. I love this game more than anyone else that I know. I’m happy to share.

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