however i just discovered that the rifle spear parry in two-handed mode so i may have found my weapon for the rest of the game. i've been using the kirkhammer on and off, mainly for the transformation animation but the "hammer" form seems a little ineffective. the sword form is pretty good though

>When game first released, the weapon "economy" was kinda
>fucked, so you couldn't easily upgrade weapons without
>dedicating hella hours to the Chalice Dungeons. But when I
>picked the game back when DLC dropped, I found they had done
>tons of things to improve player experience, including making
>it easy to purchase upgrade mats from both vendors in the
>dream.

cool. nice of the devs to open it up a bit more. i remember grinding quite a bit in DS and DS2 to get a new weapon acquired in the later parts of the game up to "usable" status. not fun

>And related to that, don't be conservative about spending
>Insight. There are some cool things that happen based on your
>insight value, but you get it with ease, so hit up the Insight
>vendor as you please.

i keep stockpiling the "hard" insight items and stay carrying 5+ "soft" insight. purchased a few things from the shop but nothing particularly expensive, interesting, or useful just yet beyond the multiplayer items. is it not recommended to go over the "weird stuff happens here" threshold too early in the game? i understand that 15+ (?) soft insight is where the changes happen

unrelated (maybe it is related to insight...): what in the world is that time/space rift near the old cathedral that only appears as you approach the body near the tree? is that how you start the DLC?