You have an equip weight limit and an overall carry weight limit. It sounds like common sense but if you have heavy armor and heavy weapons you will move slow. The efficiency at which you can evade attacks and the speed at which you can run will depend on how much you have equipped relative to you equip weight limit. Note that the type of armor you are wearing appears to be irrelevant to your dodge/run speed, but it does effect stamina regeneration (heavy armor means slower stamina regeneration). Items which count as equipped are the 4 armor slots (Head, Torso, Arms, Legs) and the 2 slots for each hand, so arrows, rings, and hotkey [] items do not count.
There seem to be four degrees of weight:
Over: If you have more weight equipped than your equip limit, even jogging by pushing the L stick full forward is impossible, and attempting to roll will leave you standing stunned for a second.
Maxed: If you have close to your max equip rate you will move slow. When you roll, your dualshock will rumble with the weight of your armor. This is when your equip weight is >50% and <100%.
Normal: If you are not equipped to the maximum you should be able to roll around pretty effectively. Not fast, but not slow either. Your dualshock will not rumble when you roll. This is when you're equip weight is <50%.
Fast: If you are lightly equipped you can move very quickly. You will roll and run much quicker.
You can either block with a shield or with a weapon (if you are holding it with two-hands). When blocking, stamina will first be depleted, after which you will lose HP if you have no stamina left. If you know an attack is going to be strong (or you don't have any stamina left) it might be better to parry, or even better, evade. If you block an enemy attack, they will have lower defense for just a moment after as their attack has rebounded off your guard, so if you attack quickly just after, you can do more damage than if their guard is up.
The important stats to keep an eye out for your shield are DamageCut% and HitRes. Your weapon will also have these stats and will be used if you are using your weapon to block.
DamageCut% describes how much of the damage from an enemy attack will be negated if you block (so if it is 100% you will take no damage). Note there are 3 values which describe the defense to Physical, Magical, and Fire % separately, and some attacks do damage of multiple types (Physical + Fire for the flaming sword Dreglings, for example).
The HitRes describes the strength of the shield, in terms of how much stamina will be taken for blocked attacks. If an attack exceeds the HitRes your guard will be broken. This means you are stunned for a moment and you drop your shield, making you vulnerable. A shield with higher HitRes will keep you safer, but these shields are usually larger and heavier.
If you're attacking an enemy (which is using your stamina), and quickly need to block, remember your stamina might be depleted easily by blocking the enemy attack. Your other options are evading (rolling away also uses stamina). As a player, stamina management during combat is a key skill which will improve your play and your characters survivability. Learn how much stamina the attacks of your weapons use up, and try to always leave some stamina to evade or block enemy attacks.
Whereas you block with L1 (in effect trading damage for stamina), you parry with L2. This requires exceptional timing and doesn't work with all enemies (especially non-humanoid monsters/enemies and bosses, except the Old Monk), so practice with the non-firebombing enemies on 1-1, then on the 2-1 miners.
If you successfully parry, you gain the benefits of blocking an enemy attack plus gaining time to riposte back for a critical extra damage hit (similar to a 'backstab'). The bonus comes at the risk of miss-timing the parry, which is as bad as not blocking at all. Sometimes if you miss the parry by just a fraction of a second, you will hear the block sound, yet both life AND stamina will be taken away. Avoid that mess up at all possible.
Some weapons can't parry, as instead they are used to shield bash (e.g. spiked shield or steel shield). Shield bashing is useful if an enemy has closed too close for a slow, long weapon and you need to get a quick attack in to interrupt an enemy attack.
It's also fun to bash with these heavy shields if you're fighting on a ledge - shove the enemy off it as it will knock them back.
At the weapon stats screen, the "DamageCut%%" refers to physical and magical damage reduction when using the weapon to block. So the stats work like a shield, but the protection is generally a lot lower blocking with a weapon. With 40 / 80 on that sword, you're looking at 40% physical damage and 80% magical damage reduction during blocks.
Using the lock-on (R3), as well as the lock-off, effectively is incredibly important in this game. Many piercing moves and weapons will require it. Staying locked on all the time isn't usually very effective either, especially against bosses. Quickly locking-off and disengaging from the enemy is just as important. Good maneuvering can give you time to regain stamina.
If you find the game too hard or frustrating, and if you absolutely must, you're given an easy way to cheat. This game auto-saves everything, by merely pressing the "PS" button and hitting "Quit Game" you can prevent the game saving a bad event result and restart close to where you died if you do it quick enough.
While its not much different from wRPGs like Oblivion, where you can save anywhere, before engaging in enemies or bosses, and quickly do things over - it's still considered a bit like cheating in this game.
BUT… you have to 'quit game' immediately after you die. Most of the time there's no point since you can usually go back to a boss quickly. Personally used it only couple of times so I wouldn't know if it damages your saved file or not. According to some people on the Japanese boards it doesn't.
Doing this trick may damage your saves, even if you only do it a few times. I did it five, and now my third and fourth save slots auto-delete anything put in them! I'm lucky my first two even work. DO NOT DO THIS.
Note: the above is probably good advice, however I have used this quit method about 50 times or so, sadly, on my current save and no problems yet. This is on the Korean version and NOT signed-in online.
Edit: I too can not say that this damaged my file, and i am doing it a lot. (Asia Version and NA Version)
**Edit: This trick is especially effective when you have accidentally hit an NPC, triggering them to become hostile to you. Just press the magic button, quit the game and come back. As the autosave is triggered only from time to time and during deaths. This will and should not damage your file.
By pressing circle to roll or jump backwards the instant you hit ground after falling you will prevent the fall from stunning you. However, you will still take fall damage, sometimes at the end of the roll. Be careful when doing this, if you roll onto another fall, both falls are added when the game considers whether or not the fall was lethal. It is possible to die from a lethal fall by roll canceling of multiple small steps.
Easter Egg - Candle Maiden Event
Try hitting Candle Maiden, after a few hits (make sure you drain her HP to zero) she would die on the floor. After a few seconds she revives (it's pretty scary and cool to watch her rise from her death). LOL. Talk to her and she'll explain to you what's up with that. XD I find it funny try it! (by f0xdye)
(beware of false message ahead) Regarding the 'tip' above, i've tried this on a test-knight and she doesn't rise from the dead, you just lose the ability to level up your character.
In my NA most updated version, I can comfirm the first message is true. I accidently hit R2 after seeking soul power on my knight and one shotted the maiden, she rose shortly after that and apologized for not being able to die. I can still level up my character normally, but I think my character trendency moved abit to black because of that.
I've killed her plenty of times, every time she rises and says she cannot die while the Nexus binds her, so don't worry if you accidentally hit her. There is no change in character tendency at all (I believe it's because if it did, getting a black character tendency would be incredibly easy), so have fun killing her as many times are you want. -Rokuu
Ok, I didn't read the instruction manual so I'll start off by assuming you did not either. If you are unable to shoot things with arrows, even if you have a bow equipped, then you'll need to open your equipment menu and look to the right of where your armor is displayed, you'll see two boxes. One looks like an arrow quiver, one looks like a small pouch. The quiver is for your arrows and the pouch is for your bolts (crossbow ammo)
Also, you can enter first person view with the bow by hitting your triangle key (to use the bow with both hands) and then hitting L1. You can also zoom in and out with the directional pad up/down.
The lovely thing about the bow is that you can shoot longer then it's range allows. To do this, you will need to aim high and to the left of the target. For instance, in 2-1 you have a couple of demons chuncking boulders at you. It is possible to take these enemies out from the top of the spawn area's stairs. Just zoom in all the way and aim about 2 body lengths high and 1 body length to the left. It will take a little trial and error, but anywhere the arrow hits, it will do damage. So as long as you can see an enemy, no matter how far away, you'll be able to score a hit.
