To Link the Fire Episode VI: Kahmul78 & Terramantis
Dec. 14, 2015To Link the Fire Episode VI: Kahmul78 & Terramantis
Back in June this year, I had the amazing fortune of being interviewed in an Edge magazine articlealongside Hidetaka Miyazakiabout online communities filling in the blanks for games they love. The journalist, Ben Maxwell, asked me: “Why is it important for you to do this?”. My reply was:
Back in 2008, whenDemon’s Soulsfirst launched, Japanese fans were lost as to what to do, or where to go in the game world. The stubborn amongst us decided not to give up, and started recording our findings on the Livedoor-hosted Japanese wiki.Slowly but surely, we created a resource that took a difficult and mystery-shrouded game and documented the whole damned thing. I find myself 7 years later with an accidental mission: That any gamer can feel welcome in the RPG they want to try, and they feel there’s a community there for them with ideas, support and simple or in-depth explanation to complicated or obscure concepts.
In these 7 years I have been introduced to, discovered and met amazing individuals and teams who create exceptional content around the games we love. Fextralife would like you to meet them too.
In this series we will be showcasing members of the Souls community, who through their passion, dedication and hard work have become a bigger influence than most. Some of these individuals are already well known and others have been operating quietly behind the scenes. We hope you’ll get to know all of them, learn some things about them and gain some insight into the pillars of the community. You can find Episode Ihere, Episode IIhere,Episode IIIhere,Episode IVhereand episode Vhere.
Click on the tabs above (orwatch this video) to get started meetingKhamul78andTerramantis.
Fexelea
Our first interview is with speedrunner Kahmul78. Famous for holding the World Record for beating Dark Souls faster than anyone, you can find him onTwitteror visit hisTwitch Channel.
Cas:Tell us a bit about yourself, where are you from? What are your hobbies? What do you do when you’re not making moveset videos?
Kahmul78: I’m from Germany. Currently I am working in Software Development/Engineering, but when I get home I’m mainly streaming and not much else as I am tired usually.
My hobbies are Streaming, Speedrunning and also Pen-Spinning (which is like doing tricks with your pen and hand). You can put a lot of time into it, its a pretty awesome hobby! When I started it, I was quite amazed by it. You can’t really stop, you do it all the time without even noticing. I really like it a lot.
Programming is also one of my hobbies but I dont do it much anymore at home because I am doing it at work all the time..
Cas:How did you get into Pen-Spinning? How did that start?
Kahmul78: I started 5 years ago, when a classmate (who did it a year before that), showed it to me. When I saw it, I was like “That’s F***ing Cool! I want to do that!” It kind of went on from there, learning with other friends. We were kind of like a group of friends all just learning together.
Cas:When did you get into gaming and what are some of your favourite games?
Kahmul78: I started with my older brother having a pc, as I was too young to have my own.He used to play games and I just watched him and also played some of his games when he wasn’t playing.
Cas:What brought you to the Souls Series?
Kahmul78: My friend told me to try out the game. I didn’t really have any games to play at the time and I was looking for a new game to play. So my friend goes like “Hey, you should try out Dark Souls. It’s really tough. I’m stuck on Taurus Demon.” So I tried it out myself and that is when I started..
Cas:What was your moment / series of moments when the game clicked for you? When did you know this game was special?
Kahmul78: I really love those Medieval-Fantasy type games, so anything that is something like that I kind of like it straight away!So even with Dark Souls challenging you more than other games, I got into it straight away and just played through it without a break..
Cas:How did you get into speedrunning?
Kahmul78: I was on the Dark Souls sub-Reddit and I saw Noobest’s Any% World Record at 52:45. It was the first time I saw something like that so I checked out the video and started to watch Noobest live on Twitch. Eventually I got in contact with other people who speedrun the game and started to watch them. That went on for almost 8 months until I started practicing myself.
Cas:What made you want to stream your speedruns? What got you into that?
Kahmul78: When you stream, it’s a lot more fun. If you have to grind out attempts to get a run going, it makes it better to have somebody to chat to. It’s boring alone. Also, I got into speedrunning by watching streams so I just associate speedrunning and livestreams together.
Cas:When speedrunning, which boss/area gives you the most difficulty or is the hardest time-wise?
Kahmul78: It heavily depends on the route. We have these 2 main categories – Any % (where you have to finish the game as fast as possible) and also “All Bosses” (where you have to defeat all bosses and then finish the game). They are both quite different. In Any% you use the Black Knight Halberd. In “All Bosses”, you use magic because it takes a while to get going but once it does, you can one-shot everything. So they are both essentially different, and both routes have different difficult parts.
In “All Bosses”, its Anor Londo, mainly because of Ornstein & Smough. You dont really have the right tools and the Painting Guardian is at the Rafters, to push them out of the way if they block you. It is kind of annoying. So at O&S in particular you only have the Great Soul Arrow and basic spells. So you have to hope Ornstein doesn’t dodge too much and you have to play well as well. And in Any%, a really hard segment where you have to do Bed of Chaos early before the Lord Vessel, there is a skip that allows you to do that. That skip is pretty difficult and the skip before that where you have to roll through the lava with base vitality at the edges with rocks. That part is pretty precise and kills a lot of runs because it is pretty difficult.
Cas:You almost never heal on your speedruns. Can you tell us why that is?
Kahmul78: The reason for that is the Red Tearstone Ring, where if you are below 20% HP, it doubles your damage almost. It is the most broken item in the game and it is essential to speedruns as it speeds them up by a lot. However you also can’t get hit, which in turn makes the runs a lot more interesting because you have to be good and it gives a tactical feeling to the fights..
Cas:You seem quite happy with your rececnt WR for Any%. Is there any place you feel like you could save more time?
Kahmul78: I am really happy with the run. My goal was to get below 45:20, and I got 45:17 which is pretty good. You always lose a bit of time on each segment as it is inevitable. You can’t get a perfect run. It is impossible, especially in Souls games. The time I lost the most was at Nito, where I lost close to 15 seconds when he screamed at the start. That one was pretty bad because when he screams, he stands in place for around 5 seconds and you don’t really want that at the start. You instead want him to come towards you because at the back there are like these big skeletons. You really dont want to aggro them because even though you have stone armor to poise through the skeletons, they still deal a lot more damage and they stagger you. So you need to YOLO it or you have to wait for Nito to come towards you. So that wasted a lot of time and the skeletons weren’t really nice to me either so that’s where I could have saved the most time. But otherwise I am still happy overall..
Cas:You did speedrunning in Bloodborne but returned to Dark Souls. What is it about Dark Souls that keeps you returning to it?
Kahmul78: I guess it’s kind of the thing where the first Souls game you play, you love the most? What I really like about Dark Souls though is that it does not feel like a fast let’s-play, like how Bloodborne does. I feel there are more interesting mechanics in Dark Souls. For example the Red Tearstone Ring makes the game more tactical, and there are more interesting glitches and skips like the Firesage skip that I mentioned earlier. There is just way more different ways to play the game. You could do magic, or the black knight halberd or whatever for that matter. In Bloodborne, it is rather specific in what it wants to achieve and that also reflects in the speedruns. It is so you have a ridiculously aggressive playstyle with the cleaver and you just continually trade hits with the bosses. Its not really what I want to do. I like it when you’re not allowed to take a hit in the boss fight, and that really creates more intense moments..
Cas:If someone wanted to begin speedrunning, where would you recommend they begin?
Kahmul78: I would recommend that they first have to really learn the game. After playing like only 2 playthroughs, you are not able to do a speedrun at all. Especially if you rely on the Havel’s Set armor or Greatshields. You have to be confident in your dodges and the bosses moves, so you have to play a bunch. Also, you should try a bunch of challenge runs like SL1 Challenge Run. It is one of the most basic runs. Then you can do No-armor or No-healing and so on. It helps you a lot to get better.
Also you should check out speedsouls.com, its a wiki for speedrunning the Souls games. There is a lot of info about that on the Dark Souls page. there is also a “Getting Started” page that has a bunch of information that you can read through. It is all pretty helpful.
Cas:How do you see your role in the Souls Community?
Kahmul78: I don’t think I have really any special role. I’m not really much different than the other runners, just trying to get a personal best. We also have this skype group where we discuss strategies and stuff like “Hey, why don’t we do that? It is probably faster” etc. There is not really any special person in the speedrunning community. Its just like everyone trying their best to improve the routes and push the times lower and lower..
Cas:What do you look forward to the most in DS3? Is there anything in particular you hope makes a return?
Kahmul78: Red Tearstone Ring? That would be quite nice, but I don’t think it will return because in Dark Souls 2 they nerfed it a lot. It is also the reason why in Dark Souls 2 runs, the Red Tearstone Ring is barely used at all, since the damage increase is way lower than Dark Souls 1, and it also does not work with Magic. So that is really sad. I really hope they return that to DS3, but I dont really think they are going to.Otherwise, I’m just avoiding any Dark Souls 3 spoilers at all. I don’t really want to know anything about the game so that I can go in blind.
We hope you were thoroughly entertained and that you learned a little bit about those two wonderful people. Stay tuned for the next episode in the series, where we will bring you two different members of the community on our quest to get to know them all.
Check out Episode Ihere. Episode IIhere. Episode IIIhere,Episode IVhere,and Episode Vhere.
Our next interview is with the very popular youtuber Terramantis. With a growingYoutube followingof over 190,000 subscribers, this lore hunter has produced amazing content for several games besides the core of the Souls series. Find him onTwitterto get in touch.
Fex: Tell us a bit about yourself, where are you from? What are your hobbies?
Terramantis: I pretty much just make videos. I also go the gym a lot and like play paintball, though I dont do that as frequently as I’d like. Other than that, I just try to catch up on any media I can – TV, Movies, etc. Surprisingly, for being a video-game youtuber, don’t get to play games as much as I wish I could. If I’m working on a video, that is pretty much all I do. I would just wake up, eat food, take a break and go to the gym if I’m worn out. Sometimes, I’ll even spend 16 hours a day on a video depending on the complexity of what I’m working on.
Fex:When did you get into gaming? what are you favorites?
Terramantis: I was born in 1985, so I had a Nintendo gaming system from the day I was born. I have been playing from the day I could hold a controller for the most part. One of the first games I ever played was the very first Mario. That is pretty much how I got into gaming and have been ever since.
So my favorite games, almost all of them have evolved over time. When I was growing up, I really like fighters like Mortal Kombat and Street Figher. Nowadays though, I’m really into stuff that is more complex, so RPGs and stuff of that nature. So I really like games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, TES V: Skyrim, Project Eternity and pretty much everything from Obsidian Studios.
Fex:What games are you playing right now?
Terramantis: Recently I bought Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, so I have been playing that for a couple of days now. In my free time, I have been playing Fallout:New Vegas so that I can get hyped for Fallout 4 when that releases eventually.. I’m super excited for Fallout.[Editor note: the interview was done before release of Fallout 4]
Fex:How did you get into the Souls series? How did you discover them?
Terramantis: I first got into the Souls series when I saw Kevin VanOrd’s review of it on Gamespot. I just saw the preview and I really wanted to play it. That was one of my first experiences with the Souls franchise, so kind of just like looking at it through a window, wishing I had it, but couldn’t play it.
Fex:When did you know there was something special about this game? When did it click for you?
Terramantis: Honestly, I think it was probably the review. I didn’t even have to play it, but I thought it looked like the greatest thing ever! The combat and the way he described it in the review, just made me like “I have to have this!” So I eventually ended up borrowing my brother’s PS3 because I didn’t own one at the time. I went out and bought the game, even though I didn’t own the system. I bought Demon’s Souls, borrowed his playstation and just played it for a couple of weeks because it was as long as I could let him lend me the playstation for. As soon as I put it in, I loved everything about it and it just clicked immediately.
Fex:What made you want to make videos for the Souls series? Why is it so special? What inspirations did you have?
Terramantis: I first started out making videos for friends. They would just ask me things and I would try to explain it to them because I had like this Dark Souls mental map in my head that was like perfect. I had actually explained things over the phone to people, so it would be like, “Go down this way, take a right, there’s going to be a bad guy on your left. Kill him. Do this…!”
Eventually, some of those thing wouldn’t work out. I tried explaining things to people and then I would be like, “You know what? I’m just going to make a video for you.” So my buddies would be like, “How do I get the Eastern armor? How do I get the Dragon Tail?”So, I would have this really junky, 5-dollar capture device thing that recorded 480p or whatever is the terrible quality you could get and I would upload these videos of junky tutorials. That is how I got into making Souls stuff..
Fex:How do you decide what videos to make? How does the creative process work?
Terramantis: Now that this is my job, I don’t really make a lot of the videos I want to make. I love editing and writing, so lore is probably where my passion lies. But if I’m being honest, those videos dont actually make the views or bring in the traffic that I need to live. So I basically will try to make the “10 Things..” videos because those drive a ton of traffic. But ever since they have become a driving force on my channel, I have been putting more time and care in them. I have actually kind of hidden lore videos and topics before because I think “Who would want to watch it, if it isn’t a 10 things video?” So that’s the creative process I have to do – give and take of what I really love compared what I know will make me enough money to survive..
Fex:Your videos are very well produced. Do you have a background in media?
Terramantis: I have no background or formal training of anything. If you watch my very first review, the sound is awful. I had captured the audio on my headset and used the junky recording device I was talking about. The whole thing was just the worst quality ever.
August 18th was my 2 year anniversary, and basically the whole thing has just been a journey of trying to learn how to do all these things. I learnt how to animate, key frame and chroma key. All kinds of aspects. Basically, Youtube has been my teacher. If there’s anything I wanted to learn, i just jumped on Youtube and tried to find a tutorial. So for the most part I’m just self-taught and have no background.
Fex:What tools do you use? What are the must-have tools for the aspirinig youtuber?
Terramantis: Now that I know what I’m doing, I use Adobe Audition for audio. I use Sony Vegas Pro 13 for video editing, which I actually wouldn’t recommend to anyone as it crashes constantly. I have a PC now that should be able to run circles around the requirements and it still crashes all the time. I also use an Elgato Game Capture and I have some pretty good mics now. I no longer use the junky headset that I just used to capture stuff off of. So pretty good software and hardware now.
Fex:You have a successful and diverse channel now. How was your growth experience?
Terramantis: I think youtube in general jsut works exponentially. I remember when the first time when I really was trying to get started and I had talked to VaatiVidya. He was at around 40,000 subscribers and I was just at 500. He said to me “Once you get to 3000, things really start to pick up,” and that really turned out to be true. Once I got to 3000, it just jumped to 10,000. It also has to do with the timing of what you’re covering, coupled with what is happening in the industry at the time. So right when I hit 10,000 was when DS2 came out. So I made a ton of content for it. To reach a 100,000 it took around 18 months but 5 months later I was at 170,000. So it is like with a fraction of the time, I am close to doubling. So I guess thats just the way of youtube. Once you grow that audience, it just helps you grow even faster over time..
Fex:What are some of your souls favorites?
Terramantis: My favorite thing about the Souls games is definitely the insane attention to detail and the secrets. There is just so much care put into every game. Like anything that you think might have a significance or this weird obscure connection, probably does. Then there’s also that layer of secrecy that creates this gaming experience like nothing else out there..
Fex:What do you look forward to in Dark Souls 3?
Terramantis: There’s some stuff in DS2 that I hope will be there but I am almost 100% positive that it will not. I almost feel like a lot of the stuff in DS3 is acting like DS2 never existed? Even though its kind of like the “Bastard Child” of the Souls series, I actually love DS2. I have always stuck by my guns with that. There’s some stuff in there that is really good and I like but I just feel like isn’t Miyazaki’s style. Like he just would not have it in there. For example, I really liked the fact that you could choose when you wanted to go to NG+. That won’t be there, I’m positive. Then, there is the Soul Vessel things so you could re-spec. I loved that because I could try out builds without having to make a whole new character. Definitely feel like Miyazaki won’t do that in either because he really emphazises that you live with the consequences of choices that you made. I also really liked Bonfire Ascetics. Those are things I wish would be in DS3, but am pretty positive won’t be.
Fex:How do you see your role within the Souls community?
Terramantis: I don’t see myself as this large entity in the souls community. I just see myself as a person who likes the aspects and the art of this content and I try to bring those aspects to life through the videos that I make and in the way that I make them. I don’t know. If Bandai Namco didn’t start inviting me to stuff or that I didn’t grow to the size that I am, I would still just think that I am just nothing? I kind of feel like I have to start taking a more serious role or that I am more impactful than I think I am. I’m not too sure.
We hope you were thoroughly entertained and that you learned a little bit about those two wonderful people. Stay tuned for the next episode in the series, where we will bring you two different members of the community on our quest to get to know them all.
Check out Episode Ihere. Episode IIhere. Episode IIIhere,Episode IVhere,and Episode Vhere.
Fexelea
MMO raider by day and guide writer by night, Fex enjoys multiplatform gaming, good books and animes, and streaming with a cold beer.
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