Frame Trap - Episode 116 "Diving Into The Underworld"

Loved the cat discussion. Have you all thought about doing a full cat episode of Frame Trap? No seriously.

V8 Dave

funny how Ben fades into darkness during this episode =)

JessieBlu

Awesome post, I appreciate your passion & knowledge for Dark Souls.

Tegan Combatti

The digs seem maybe a little off balance sometimes, sure. The individual Allies have their faves, but thaz OK.

Cloisterance

Hey Ben/Allies, I've spent hundreds of hours in DS3 multiplayer, and I wanted to chime in with my experience and advice for Mike and Mike. I absolutely LOVE seeing you play, but watching the stream and now Frame Trap, you hilariously got just about every aspect of the mechanics completely wrong. I hope that this will help make the experience better so you can continue to stream the most underrated (imo) From game. First off, the host has to be in Embered form to summon another player. Summoned phantoms do not have to be Embered, but since Embers increase your HP pool, it’s always a good idea to Ember up before being summoned. Regardless of whether or not you summon anyone, you can and will be invaded when Embered, particularly if you are streaming. Summoned players have a lower health pool and fewer Estus flasks, but defeating an invader refills one Estus charge for all friendly players. Invaders also get a refill when they defeat a friendly phantom. You can summon 2 friendly players under the default conditions (see below about the Dried Finger for the exceptions). One player can invade you at a time, and there is a 20 minute(I believe?) cooldown between invasions, again in default conditions. There are two covenant invasion areas : Crucifixion Wood/Farron Keep in Road of Sacrifices (which is the Forest/Swamp area Ian was talking about) and the area past the first boss/cathedral in Irithyll. Here you can be invaded by one red invader and up to 2 (I believe?) covenant invaders at a time, again under the default conditions. To change the default summoning/invasion conditions, there is an item you can purchase from the vendor in Firelink Shrine called the Dried Finger. This item disables the invasion timer altogether, so you can be constantly invaded by up to 2 invaders at a time, but the trade off is that you can now summon 3 friendly phantoms. Use the dried finger at your caution, but it leads to the most chaotic fun for online play. There is a must have covenant item Damiani appeared to miss in the High Wall area called Way of the Blue. You can pick it up from the old woman that gave you the small banner in the cathedral right before the boss fight. When you equip this, it will summon in friendly blue phantoms to help you when you are invaded. So you can have 1 or 2 extra allies during invasion, depending on how many friends you have summoned. It is ESSENTIAL if you are playing online. A good invader will swat blue phantoms down like flies, but numbers are everything in multiplayer. A good invader will also use the front line of enemies ahead of you to bait you into fighting multiple mobs and the invaders at once. There is a consumable item you can pick up from the DS2-style giant tree up top of Firelink Shrine called Seed of a Giant tree. This is a consumable that will turn mobs hostile to invaders for 45 seconds. There is a % chance one will spawn after every invasion you suffer, up to 50% max, so it’s always a good idea to run up there and check when you head back to Firelink. You can carry 3 at once, and use them strategically to counter this tactic. Also, beware of spamming R1 against invaders who have an off hand shield or fist weapon equipped. They are baiting you into a parry. Use a well timed charged R2 poke and delay your R1s to break up the timing and be less predictable. There are both level restrictions AND gear restrictions for multiplayer. The level limit is roughly + or - 10 soul level. The gear limit is based on the highest level upgraded weapon the players have IN THEIR INVENTORY, not just equipped at the time. This is roughly +2 over the host’s highest upgraded weapon. An invader can be AT MOST 10 levels above you and have a weapon slightly higher than your most powerful weapon. Level and gear restrictions are not applied to password summons, but the game will scale the phantom down to the host’s level, so your level 150 friend can’t come in and one shot everything for you at level 20. While it’s true that people twink out their characters with end game weapons, there will never be that big of a difference in weapon power. The real power difference is down to getting end level rings from the DLCs (which are accessible fairly early on if you know what you are doing) that can overpower early game players. The invader with the flame sword was using a consumable item called Red Pine Resin that you can purchase/find fairly early, not a flame sword. It was not a special weapon. Pick some up and pop them when you go in to fight an invader. It can definitely help. The netcode for all Souls games is trash, and you will constantly get lag backstabbed, get hit by phantom range on poke weapons, and any other multitude of garbage outcomes. It’s become part of the charm for me, but just be aware that latency is awful. Set your matchmaking to Local to restrict it to North America, but obviously that only helps so much. Sorry for the long post. I’m sure I haven’t done a great job of explaining these complicated mechanics, but I really love watching you guys play DS3 and want to help make it as fun as possible for you so I and the rest of chat can come in and help/slaughter you in the jolliest way possible. Here’s a link to the good DS3 wiki entry for basic online mechanics if you need a reference: http://darksouls3.wikidot.com/online Keep up the outstanding work, and praise whichever sun you find appropriate. Love and Respect, Dour Cecil

Wombling Freely

I'm bothered by how much the digs at Microsoft bother me.

Here in Reno, NV. The area I live in, the sheriffs department uses a helicopter to herd the wild mustangs when they wander onto the highways. Shit is super loud, but hella cool to watch them do that with a helicopter and not with a horse.

Seanie Dee

thank you for email timestamps