Board Thread:Wiki Discussion/@comment-24249492-20140416125656/@comment-198.103.184.76-20151021212039

Lots to do. Especially if the player wants to attempt a no bonfire challenge on cycle two (best time to do so). You can technically do a no death challenge as well. I died on Nashandra :( Still got the no bf ring at least. But now I'll have to attempt the no death run on cycle three.

Materials. Should farm lots of titanite from Black Gulch via the awestone covenant once enemies have been despawned. Also get some awestones that way. Need billions of twinkling from Amana while in awestone covenant and petrified from imperfects in Sanctum (if you purchased the dlc, and if not, sucks to be you).

Twinkle Havel's equipment that you plan to use and/or his shield infused with magic to help with second smelter demon. Twinkle chaos/hexer's/black/black witch gear so you can beat Darklurker taking less damage. Twinkle Santier's spear and raw it. Twinkle the Old iron crown as you will need it for no bf challenge.

Twinkle or slab any spare armors and weapons you think you'll use. You should have physical defense armor in addition to a specialized magic type armor. IE hexer gloves and havel's gauntlet. You should have shield damage mitigation for each type. Gyrm shield nulls fire, magic havel for magic, dark rebel for dark. One dragon rider uses lightning, so not technically necessary to have a lightning defending shield.

No matter your build, you need weapons for the different elements. A lightning strike, fire slash, a magic weapon, a dark weapon, and pure physical. It's also good to have a competent bleed weapon and a competent poison weapon.

Every build should have access to a knockdown weapon for NG+ as well. Cheapest weapon I know that has knockdown is the large club at 26 strength. Two handed strong attack knocks down most enemies. Some ultra greatswords have knockdown, but the effect is inferior to a hammer, meaning very few enemies will actually get knocked down.

Every build should have access to a strong bow for long range attacks. Melee is short range; miracles, sorcery, pyromancy, hexes, and crossbows are classified as medium range. Only bows work long range. Bow of Want for miracle/hex users. Dragonrider bow for sorcery/hex users. Composite or Sea bow for str builds, and hunter's for dex builds.

A non magic type user should still have int and faith at 20 each for damage mitigation purposes. Then stats pumped into str, dex, vit, etc. Moving on to NG+ with less than 20 int, faith, and 50 vigor make you prone to dying.

Obviously there is more, depending on how much depth you want to do. I made it a point of maxing all but the sentinel and blood covenants prior to NG+. But getting awestones takes too long, and waiting until NG+ to kill Rhoy 12 times makes it so much easier.