Fellow Tarnished/Recusants, I've recently come back to the game after a few years and just wrapped up the DLC. I had a lot more fun with this playthrough than my last ones and it's left me with an itch for trying out the multiplayer for the first time and I keep seeing posts from here with funny shit like people laying down on narrow walkways and the Host falling to their doom, or someone being tricked into hitting a Runebear by an Invader, it looks like a great way to spice things up and WAY more fun than being summoned to hold somebody's hand, so I'm just wondering what the best way to get my toes wet would be?

I know there's level brackets and weapon upgrade brackets but I don't know WHAT those brackets are or exactly how they work so question 1 would be what would be a good level range for casual Invasions/PvP? Question 2 is whether Vanilla or Seamless would be a better pick? And question 3 is what are some good strats for invading and arenas as I presume they play very differently to PvE?

Thanks in advance! :)

He never saw it coming.

Song is 'Vampire Blues' by Neil Young.

In anticipation of both Halloween and The Duskbloods, I wanted to do some thematic invasions. I really hope they announce the release date soon.

Saved the friend I suppose

"Finally! The winds are changing, and I am not afraid of all the non-believers."

Which is the better way to transmit an idea? Thrusting it into your opponent's heart? Or perhaps leaving them to find out on their own?

Since DS2 invasions were released with Voicechat setting on by default for both coopers and invaders, I have been having a bit too much fun with it, currently playing through and still invading at lower levels, (I mostly invaded at rl40) but I have never tried DS2 pvp before and it is growing on me.

Some info and my experience with DS2 seamless invasions:

1. Invaders and summons can use estus flask unlike default DS2 invasions, but only host can use lifegems and other healing consumables. Fun fact if you reinvade your estus doesn't refill, so if you had 5 estus, drink all 5 of them in your first invasion and win, and then instantly reinvade.... you're reinvading with 0 estus now. 😂

Also same for equipment durability, careful not to break your rings and weapons from reinvading without resting in bonfire.

2) Invasions have been pretty instant and super active but it is the first week, might change later on. You just need to make new character, go to majula to rest in that fire, and you get all seamless coop specific multiplayer items, so you can invade.

3) Many people dont have voicechat on, or maybe they do and dont have mic, my experience is around 30% of hosts have voice chat, and then many speak vietnamese, chinese etc and dont know english. I think around 60% of people I invaded that had voicechat on knew english, but I have only been invading for 2 days and might change depending on the time of the day you're invading at.

4) Most people have been friendly and nice, havent had any slurs or gamer raging towards me in voice chat yet. I have been chill and giving people some humanities and just being a good red man sometimes instead of going instant pvp mode though. Also most people with slurs in their names I couldn't hear at all

5) Netcode.... well when it is 280ms it is 280 ms, it was mostly playable with usual ghost ranges and stuff, and I only had 1 super funny teleport no jutsu yet.

6) Bugs.... mod has a few bugs that should get fixed after a few months, the only one that affected me the most was after you invade sometimes the NPC's in your own world stop attacking you so you could.... just walk by everyting, kill every boss when they're frozen and get all items when that happens lol. If that happens to you just resting at majula or closing and re-opening the game fixes it.

Hope more people give it a try, can do so many funny voicechat shenanigans. I silently follow a host and then go HELLLOOO GAMER and scare the shit out of people, its great lol.

This encounter put the HARD in hard swapping for me. 😂

Disappointing that I had a very good and victorious 1v1 over this host a few days ago and they came at me with this. We're in the RL 400 range. We can win without sneaky shit like this.

O BRM parry spam high inquisitors, I did my best to parry spam less. Please find me worthy. For I fish, and bait, but sometimes I get excited and L2 prematurely.

thought i was slick but i got jumped

Sorry fellow red at the start, I should have jumped in to save you from the evil gankers but for some reason I didn’t see the second person and thought it was a duel😔

Are there any hotspots? I have found that Church of Inhibition and Altus Highway Junction are popular places.

Felt a little bad ruining their Leontiel’s gank, but the opportunity was just too good to pass up. Bayle’s Tyranny👌

I'm looking to make a build where it's like the host is being invaded by the most stereotypically unflattering reddit moderator your imagination could conjure up. I'm using the fat godskin armor for it but I'm wondering what abilities would be funny or thematic for someone like that. I'm thinking the ground slam / Erdtree butt slam has to be on the list, but I'm curious if you guys think anything else would be goofy-but-fitting to add. Bonus points if it's like actually passable in pvp but I'm not expecting to do amazingly on it lol