Yeah, it's purely any NG+ setting, and you will continue to get both The Rotten and the Old Dead One souls from it in each subsequent NG+. I have like 4 Old Dead One souls. Really annoyed with the ascetics, to be honest. I preferred it when I had to play the entire game again to obtain boss souls.

@kingx21lt: If it's any consolation, I rarely heal in duels and only when my opponent does. It resets the odds.

@Kickable: Duels are limited to 12.5 mnutes, at which point the person with the most health wins by default. If you know that and you time it, you can heal and win in that manner, but I've never been in a duel that lasted any more than one minute.

Limiting flask uses would be an interesting idea. Giving players as much as 3 per match would increase the challenge by a large margin.

Nein. There is none.

WoG required 28 faith, and without spices you actually had to have 28 faith :P Plus, you could only obtain it from Rhea after you saved her from the Tomb of the Giants and visited her immediately after doing so (killing Nito and progressing the game meant Petrus would kill her). Though I smashed Petrus purely because I didn't like him.

I miss that difficulty in obtaining things and how it made me feel sad for having to kill Priscilla to gain her scythe/tail, and even killing Sif who you later learn was just protecting the grave of his master.

Meh, he wanted to be a jerk and attempted to claim I had an inability to understand English. I made it obvious for him that he's in no position to be criticizing anyone's perspicacity.

I'm a Sentinel and I don't mind people healing - after all, I'm not the one who loses much by dying. I lose one cracked eye orb; I have over two million souls and 10,000 to replace that orb is nothing in comparison.

Lag was an unintentional aspect of DS1 that you just had to grit and bear with, whereas running and healing is to be expected. With the latter being preventable if you have quick reflexes and the right items equipped. DS2 makes sorcery so much more available than its predecessor, so everyone is naturally gifted with long-range attacks (that grievance is for another topic though).

I'm not expressing everything in terms of what is tactical, I've been explaining that the game presents a balanced system in every online play aspect. Where you have one restriction - such as invaders being inhibited from item use - the opponent has something else restricted or threatened that you do not. But with arena duels the person who refuses to use what is provided to both players only restricts themself. That's not a game design fault.

I'm looking at this from a cost-benefit ratio and taking into consideration all aspects of the mechanics, rather than just focusing solely on one in particular that does have a respective counter-measure.

:D I actually went back to DS1 and lamented how difficult it is to obtain or meet the requirements to use spells. I liked the idea that to gain Sunlight Spear you had to offer the soul of the final boss to the Sunlight Altar in NG+. I wish they'd impose more restrictions on the miracles and sorceries. Limit spices even further by only allowing ~5 to be used on any one spell.

There's been no reply so I'd assume he ragequit :P

It's much easier in DS2 considering that the spells are readily available and don't need esoteric requirements like they did in the first DS. And yeah, I have 100%.

Actually, now I wonder which DS1 trophies I need.

Just look for summon signs on the ground. Phantoms can't stay in your world too long anyway so any buddying you do get going will be fleeting.

What soul level are you? I found that I could take a decent amount of hits before I'd die in NG+, and the same for NG++. I was SL130 when I went into NG+.

The quickest way would be to use the arena in the Cathedral of Blue, or invade using cracked blue eye orbs. The former is definitely faster but it might take you awhile before you hit 150 wins, although it's faster than the invading method because you won't have an unlimited supply of orbs from Targray until NG+. You'll just need to co-op or find somewhere to gain Tokens of Fidelity.

Honestly, it's entirely up to you and your play-style. Personally I went down the NG++ route, as I can run through the game pretty fast. Weigh up your options and the implications of each and decide which would be best for you.