MrBobDobalina

Just go double or nothing a few times! Simple!

I'm sorry, that's horrible. Did anyone else see what happened and stop? If so, chat to them first and see if they'd be comfortable backing you up on what happened (dog ran out, no time to react). Hopefully that's not needed, but you never know.

I saw that exact thing happen when the car in front of me hit a dog. Poor thing was dying on the road and I heard someone down the street whistling for their dog to come inside. I went and told them what happened, and made sure to say that the driver is distraught and absolutely could not have done anything to avoid the dog. Fucking sucks for everyone involved

Checking in from NZ, sounds familiar to me

Well goddamn it. I was just having this convo on another thread. My main point: don't spread lies especially when there is SO MUCH real shit to laugh at them for...

Edited from my other comments elsewhere:

JD is a creepy weirdo, but the couch story was made up.

I fucking hate it when people feel the need to make up stuff about someone who already has plenty of real red flags that need attention.

Yes it's funny, and it's working in the short term. But any lie, once uncovered, makes it so much easier for even the worst positions to be defended. 'See, they have to make shit up about us, they have nothing'. Bam, now even all the other factual points are discredited in the eyes of many people who may have been on the fence.

You know the whole 'fake news' thing being thrown around a lot by one side in particular? It doesn't seem like a good idea to give them more examples they can correctly point to when they want to discredit you and anything else you say.

Keep calling them weird, keep having fun with it. It's fucking great. But use the real shit. There's so much

Haha well as much as that mindset helped me (and yes transformed some Sekiro fights from hard as hell to seeing how quickly I could put them down), a lot of Lies of P still came down to desparate messy scraps for survival. Especially in NG+, I got smashed by that damn green monster so hard

Yeah I feel like it would be a nice in-between option for ya, as you mentioned the second phase troubles in your edit. It really is harder to learn a second phase when you're only getting through the first on every 5th try or so (Laxasia was a pain in the ass for this, I never really got a good feel for phase 2, just managed it somehow on a lucky run with wild and terrified inputs haha)

I think having Sekiro as my first soulslike taught me that there's a big gap between surviving a phase and really nailing a phase though, so I try to take that with me and get phase 1 to point of just warming up. And looking for more and more windows to inflict damage - it's amazing how quick some of the fights can be when you find more of them

My only soulslike games have been Sekiro and Lies of P (some bloodborne years ago but didn't finish it).

Like others have said, play the way it feels right to you. I get that you're saying it's somewhere in between - getting frustrated solo, but too easy with summons. If you get to that point again, maybe try using summons to learn the boss (EG get to the second phase every time to then learn the second phase) but don't allow yourself to complete it during that round. Then when you feel ready, back to solo.

Personally, what I enjoy about these games is the design of each encounter. I feel like I only experience the full intended design of the fight if it's 1v1, hitting a boss that is attacking some other npc isn't engaging to me. So I don't touch summons.

If the game is well designed, even a really hard boss should feel fair - when I die, I should be able to understand what I did wrong and what I still need to learn, and once I've seen it all I need to hone my reactions to each tell and pattern. Then it doesn't matter how many tries it takes, as long as I'm still enjoying that process (yes it's still frustrating at times but that usually just means the win will feel even better).

If I'm not enjoying the process, I'll put it down for the day, and play again when I'm into it. If it's so bad that I don't ever feel like playing it again, then that's that I guess. Hasn't happened yet (except Bloodborne, but I wasn't as much of a fan of the genre back then, will play it again at some point. Remaster when?)

I'm also not a fan of the dark souls games, something compelled me to give Sekiro a try and it's now one of my all time favourites...

You gotta pace yourself, spread that evening beer out evenly across a year of evenings

Well it's been a while, so either I still managed to get lost with that, or I completely missed that mechanic... Well, I think even if I were told what area I should be in, I'd still feel like I needed to check off the 3 new paths I can now go down of the 15 currently locked to me. If that makes sense. I miss my map...

I loved Hollow Knight except for the same issue. By the time I gain a new traversal skill, I have so many paths to explore that I can't remember them. Became all about meticulous backtracking, gave up.

Decided to give it another go. This time I found a map online, removed all icons and edited the image so it was just a simple outline with no spoilers. Printed it out. Marked it with notes and colour-coded symbols as I played. Made more progress, and exploration was way more fun.

Then I moved house and lost the map... I really love the game but just haven't gotten the desire to try again just yet. No idea how everyone does it with just those way-too-limited in game map markers

Here's the first one I found. Maybe there's more, who knows? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-29/emotional-buswell-admits-to-chair-sniffing-incident/2419558