>>332051182
No. I was SL230 at 120 hours. Having said that, I was in NG++++. +5 in some places.

I leveled pretty quickly in DS2 as well. I finished DLC around 120 I think.

no, levelling in 2 is a lot easier because it doesn't scale to ridiculous numbers of souls before level 100 like 1 does

No, you level much faster in Dark Souls 2 because you start with lower stats than in previous games.

pretty typical
especially with soul memory in the game. Every time you lose a bloodstain your soul memory is accounting for souls that you didn't get to invest in anything at all.

I'm not really OCD or anything, but I can't deal with that shit. I don't see any reason you shouldn't spend your souls on levels, just keep in mind the diminishing returns are set a lot lower than DS1.

>>332051182
No, you have lots of "level up taxes", mostly ADP and the equipment load one. Those alone will probably eat 30 soul levels.

And then there's the fact that your character will mostly be done by the time you kill the third great one and you'll already be bathing in useless souls. Since I had 99 of most consumables already I just started levelling stamina and health because... I don't know, why not? The game is just throwing millions of souls at me and I'm not even trying.
I think I was 160 by the end of a quality playthrough.

>get to giant lord
>get tseldora set
>get soul snake ring
>kill giant lord and pick up ascetic, great hero soul, lord vessel and divines in memories
>ascetic and repeat

600000 souls every time

Not at all, you can expect a character to reach ~160 on its first cycle once everything including the dlcs is done

>>332051182
>6 hours in
>SL 85
>NG+

based DaS 1

>>332052189
What baffled me is that levelling seemed mostly worthless this time, even more than Dark 1. Most if not all enemies and bosses took 40~60% of my health with a single hit, don't seen a difference with going around with 15 or 50 vitality.