Dark Souls II - Scholar of the First Sin Patch

I may be the only one here who likes Dark Souls 2, but, dagnabbit, I'll continue to post PC relevant Dark Souls 2 as long as it keeps coming. Today, the chums at From Software released the patch notes for the upcoming Scholar of the First Sin update to Dark Souls 2, which is available here. To be clear, these are the patch notes for the free update coming to previous owners of Dark Souls 2. This does not cover the separate DX 11 next-gen rerelease, which will include the DLC and require some sort of new purchase.

So what's coming? A new NPC. Some multiplayer enhancements. A new ring that absorbs souls so as to let veteran characters maintain their current soul memory. And a few minor changes/fixes/improvements for various parts of the game. Again, check out the full list here.

More information.

Don't apologize for posting DS2 news… I'm loving the game and appreciate the news update!

Wow there are some really great updates in this patch

Covenant of Champions - Stronger enemies and enemies keep re-spawning - Nice

Agape Ring - The ring absorbs souls instead of the player character allowing the player to better control online match making - really nice!

Warp Selection screen now highlights the locales where you have the best chance for online matchmaking - really good

I'm also glad to see they tweaked the game loading to skip calibrations each time. Wish they'd keep improving on this type of thing. It would be great if DS3 had no more than one or two 'clicks' to either start or quit the game... at least on the PC version anyway.

Haha, it was mostly tongue-in-cheek, as I know there are a few of us here ;-). I'm actually quite curious to see how the free and paid updates stack up to each other and to the version of the game I played through a month ago. Here's hoping they're worthwhile.. and that From gives its fans an upgrade path to the DX 11 release.

Edit: Yeah, a lot of those are nice changes. I wonder if the Ring of Agape will cool the anger of the PvP sub-community over Soul Memory, but I somehow doubt it. I really like the fact that locations are highlighted for online play.

And, yes yes yes. Why do so many PC ports leave out a "Quit to Desktop" option? I mean, seriously.

Cheers for the post, Killias. Good information to know. Not a lot of the changes here stand out or are especially amazing for me, but then again I'm relatively new to the sequel in some ways having only recently played my first way through largely unspoiled by wiki pages and whatnot. I'm also not huge on the pvp aspect.

Agreed on the quit to desktop option; it doesn't bother me especially, but if you're in a hurry it can be a mild irritation to have to wait through that calibration screen.

Incidentally, I notice the official ds2 farfire website appears to be down for me - is there another way to access the information and stats promised on the intro screen? Must admit I am curious about some of this.

Pessimeister said:

Cheers for the post, Killias. Good information to know. Not a lot of the changes here stand out or are especially amazing for me, but then again I'm relatively new to the sequel in some ways having only recently played my first way through largely unspoiled by wiki pages and whatnot. I'm also not huge on the pvp aspect.

Agreed on the quit to desktop option; it doesn't bother me especially, but if you're in a hurry it can be a mild irritation to have to wait through that calibration screen.

Incidentally, I notice the official ds2 farfire website appears to be down for me - is there another way to access the information and stats promised on the intro screen? Must admit I am curious about some of this.

Click to expand...

I honestly didn't know about the Far Fire website, but, yeah, it seems to be down for everyone. There was a thread at GameFaqs about it. I'm not sure what's happening there. Maybe the Scholar update or separate DX11 release will help..?

Sounds like overall a very good set of improvements for the online aspect (and CoC).
Belfries will be overstuffed .

I also appreciate Chameleon affecting normal enemies, could make for a fun stealth-y playthrough.

They´ve also posted a few updated item descriptions (spoiler - http://imgur.com/a/w5uUa) which indicate they´ve decided to to ease off on general vagueness, of which I think there was unnecessarily much up till now, and to provide more connections between the vanilla and DLC areas (Rotten soul description).
Also, about a month ago someone posted one of the new NPC´s dialogues
(spoiler - http://imgur.com/a/F4Rtl). It included a dialogue choice, which hopefully means the purpose of the NPC won´t be purely expository, though I´m looking forward to the exposition too.
Hopefully these changes will help to make the game´s backstory and narrative aspects meatier and more cohesive without going overboard with spoon-feeding.

Considering it´s free, this seems like a great patch overall, though I´ll probably be a bit disappointed if they haven´t sneaked in at least a few unlisted enemy related surprises on top (I thought they might because the source of the second spoiler above claimed to have encountered a new type of mimic while playing a PS3 version of SotFS).

There are some good changes, but I wish they would address the ungodly lag in PvP (and co-op--to a lesser extent) and ridiculous weapon durability issue.

Dark Souls 2 is the worst game I ever bought twice.

SirJames said:

Dark Souls 2 is the worst game I ever bought twice.

Click to expand...

For me it is one of the best game last year !
Keep the news up

Without getting too meta, I hope that the technology work here for PC is laying the ground for an eventual port of Bloodborne. I am glad this gets covered here though it does not feel like an RPG in the traditional "wall upon wall of expository text" sense. I actually wonder if it's ruined me for Skyrim for ever.

SirJames said:

Dark Souls 2 is the worst game I ever bought twice.

Click to expand...

I'll bite. Why did you buy it twice? Didn't you know you didn't like it after the first purchase?

Anyone know whether there'll be a "Scholar of the First Sin" version for X360? Or is it just for next-gen consoles?

Announcement here says it's for PS3/Xbox 360 too.

Just one more game I regret buying and playing on release.

I really need to stick to a 1 year moratorium on new releases.

I enjoyed DS2 but not nearly as much as I enjoyed DS1 and I have no interest in playing it again. So, I will miss out on what sounds like a superior version of the game because I supported them at release.

This new trend in gaming is really annoying.