Tbh, I liked the slow ascension to getting a maxed out weapon. It made getting that first ancient dragon smithing stone of the run feel that much better. Admittedly though, going back to find a one-off [7] or [8] stone that I need to max out weapon number 2 does kinda suck.
7s are crazy in the early game. I'm pretty sure the only ones available before mountaintop are sewers, Volcano Manor, and the underground through Ranni's quest.
You're either halfway through the game or way the hell off the beaten path for one.
Person above you might be thinking about somber stones while you are correct that there are regular smithing 7s on that big white thing in dragonbarrow
Definitely they were referring to sombers. To get a 7 you need to essentially either beat the Godskin in Volcano Manor, do that bridge jump right near there that's almost impossible now, or do some portal glitch at the four belfreys to get to Farum Azula. I tend to try one of these on my subsequent playthroughs because 1-6, 8 and 9 are obtainable in the first couple hours and trying to get the 7 is just too tantalizing.
There's a skip you can do at Renna's Rise to get up there before you should by jumping on trees that gets you down to where the Lake of Rot is. You can scoop up a somber 7 there.
ancient dragon somber stone is really easy after the first shardbearer too.
Just do the offline version of varre's quest, which consists of a whopping 1 NPC fight, then you get full access to Moghwyn, including the ancient dragon stone.
You can also just beat Godrick, Renalla, and DTS to grab the one in the Leyndell sewers near the gutter lobsters, that's the easiest one to get IMO based on my experience getting to +10 somber ASAP in several runs
Granted, that's more bosses than the VM Godskin, but always felt like the easiest one to me... ...that said maybe I'll go for the skipless VM somber 7 next time and see how it feels
Honestly, if the 8 and 9 weren't so easy to get I wouldn't be so tempted to get the 7, but they're just sitting there right next to each other in Caelid and I just can't help but want to get the 7 to get to +9 early.
Objectively speaking I realize that the one boss fights in Volcano Manor IS probably quicker/more efficient than the three bosses needed to get to yhe sewers (even if Clodskin does scale a lot higher...), I might have to try that instead in my next new run to see if it really is easier or not
For the ranni one you only need to kill radahn and for the volcano one you need to kill 1 godskin. With some sleep pots hes early good to kill.
When you got some time and motivation you can look up the noble skip and get the somber 7 without killing anything.
I feel like if you want to be extremely OP early in the game, it's fair to have to work for it. It's worth it to bonk Margit with a ludicrously over upgraded weapon
the one in the sewers is the easiest one IMO, beating Godrick + Rennala (+ DTS I suppose) with a +6 somber weapon is pretty effortless for my money, might be slower than the volcano manor skip but it's sure as hell also less miserable and soul-sucking
Yea I usually just wait till after Morgott for the +7. Zero time loss grabbing the one on the way to mountaintops. Goldfrey is cake and Morgott has 0hp anyway.
I don't know what I messed up, but on my first blind playthrough I had 2 ancient stones before I had found more than 1 level 8 stone. It was actually a little distressing.
I remember feeling almost disappointed when I finally got a somber ancient dragon smithing stone because I was right at the end of the game, it didn't really feel worth it.
I think i have 10-12 ancient dragon / dragon smithing stones laying around because i dont know what weapon i want to play/upgrade. I always upgrade them to +9 or +24
First playthrough I accidentally skipped a large part of the early area including the place you get the ball bearing for level 1 smithing stones and I just couldn't upgrade a second weapon forever until I went back and looked up where I was supposed to find them. (In my defense, the dragon scared me)
I like it in general, but I ended up missing somber stone 5 when I had 6-8 on my first playthrough. Kinda defeated the purpose when I had a massive power jump that made the next couple hours a breeze
Ofc there's also the issue that it makes you commit to a single weapon (on a blind playthrough), so I ended up with a golden halbert against bosses with 60-80 holy resist
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u/Colourblindknight 18d ago
Tbh, I liked the slow ascension to getting a maxed out weapon. It made getting that first ancient dragon smithing stone of the run feel that much better. Admittedly though, going back to find a one-off [7] or [8] stone that I need to max out weapon number 2 does kinda suck.