it's widely agreed upon in my circles that scholar has better item placement but original has better enemy placement, meaning the ideal would be a hypothetical fusion of the two.
i normally just go with scholar for my playthroughs
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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I feel like sotfs is mostly way harder until the shrine of amana. It was probably done to give people who already bought the original a gameplay challenge incentive to buy the game again. Sotfs feels more like a new ng+ mode for the original than a proper game of it's own, which is sad because it has the better engine.
I wish these games were more mod friendly and you could just swap out the enemy/item positionings you want in the new engine.
I never played valilla, but i'm told scholar fixed a lot of problems. The last time i played I did it with two friends and we breezed through most of the game. I had a meta hexxer build.
The dragon in Heide’s Tower in Scholar is my worst enemy
If you've done Forest of Fallen Giants first you can use a fragrant branch to free Rosabeth and buy flash sweat from her for a huge resist to fire damage.
That way you might not be instantly killed if you can't run across the bridge fast enough.
Gonna repeat what everyone says but I much preferred the enemy placements and balance of Vanilla over SotFS. That, and I hate the inclusion of unfinished or cut content in the game like the clearly half baked falconer enemies and their unfinished animations. DS2 was already leaning into the “whoaa it’s sooooo tough you’re gonna die sooooo many times” reputation in vanilla and they cranked that shit up in SotFS to irritating levels.
The performance improvements and lighting in SotFS are substantial and if I could apply them to vanilla that’d be the best of both worlds.
SOTFS.
I know a lot of people dislike the enemy placement (the run up to smelter demon is a shitshow that gets worse every NG+ cycle), but I personally prefer its item placement, improved lighting, and the new quirks added to the AI of some bosses and enemies. I think the hitboxes a bit less messy as well but I haven't gone deep into the weeds to check.
SotFS because it came bundled with the DLC.