chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
Where do I pick up?
Lower Undead Burg, I guess. I doodled around after ringing the first bell, not sure where to go, and eventually went through the darkroot basin, until I happened upon Havel's Watchtower; he was... basically invincible, but a lot easier to fight than DS3's Anime Havel, by comparison. I dodged a bunch of his blows and blocked the rest, as a strategy, but every time he nailed me I died in a single hit. Eventually I got the bright idea to start using the morningstar mace on him, the one with the bleed, and that was good. It dealt less damage than my normal weapon, but the bleed was, like, half his health, and I got two hits every backstab. Eventually he fell, and I opened up the shortcut to the upper undead burg bonfire. Then the dogs. I had to basically hit them with my Estoc before they hit me, and if I didn't they ate a third of my health. Their anger was erratic, too; the first few would rush me consistently, but there was that other one at the back of the start of the alley that I had to sometimes run up to to get it chasing me, and I always forgot about those three thieves hiding in the houses. Those guys... what were they doing with shields? Why were they backflipping? Was there just some undead burg smith forging these fancy knives like 'Yes, surely the reason for all these suspiciously sharp looking cutlery orders is that there is a new fashion trend; I know! I'll sell complementary dinner pots!'? This is where I started getting into the player summoning business. Well, I started by offering my services, but you know what I mean. It helped me learn about the ins and outs of knifedog alley, and I also got to fight the Capra demon a few times. Honestly, it didn't live up to the blitzkrieg-hype; I just walked in there, stabbed the dogs, and started pew-ing him, while my summoner either ran around uselessly or proceeded to feed it its own kneecaps, depending on whether or not they were melee-specced. I had more trouble with those two hollows in the alleyway underneath the boss fight, with the shortcut to the moss woman (knowing an ambush is there is not actually a very good counter to that ambush, just by itself, as it turns out).
Then the depths. I had no idea what was going on by this point, but I was willing to roll with it. I left my summon sign near the entrance to the area, before the hollow lunch place and the big butcher women, and was summoned a few times. I died those few times. Then I got summoned again, and didn't die that time. Honestly, I don't remember much about the guy himself, except that looking back on it I think he had the sunlight maggot hat, and his other friend was a sunbro. I learned where Laurentius was, that there was a second butcher woman, we smacked down some invader (I believe the term for unintentional ganks is gonking? Or is it just called bad luck?), and then we went through the sewers. Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing; I was so lost that I fell down a hole through a stream of water and ended up surrounded by rats and those weird slime things. Kirk showed up again, but I suppose technically this was my first time meeting him from a temporal perspective, and I kicked his butt -- at some point during this, the sunbro had found me and was roaming around with me trying to find the summoner guy, so that was my second invader ganked with that team, if we're counting NPCs, I guess. Eventually we found him fighting that channeler guy and some giant rats, and made our way down to fight the gaping dragon. The dragon was gaping. And a dragon, I guess. I spent a lot of that fight thinking I was helping, but assuming my soul arrows just really sucked; as it turned out, they were just slightly out of range, which made me feel silly, but we won. Then comes my turn. Cue many deaths, except this time I have to run back through the undead burg because I am dumb. I find Laurentius where he was in the other world, go to provoke the other butcher woman, backstab her, then go back and free him... only to get invaded. Guess who my very first Dark Souls invader was?
The Legend never dies, I guess, but I do, and in one hit to them, with my eight vitality. I was ameliorated by the meme, but I still felt it must not have been a very fun way to play the game. They were some youtuber, so I probably ended up in a cringe-ily titled fail compilation of some sort somewhere.
Anyways, I got back down there, picked up my stuff, and then proceeded on through the sewers. I still had no clue where I was going, but I eventually found the key to the depths bonfire, and then got back there. After a rest, I summoned two sunbros of my own, brilliantly beaming cooperators, and went through the sewer-maze of lostness part two, I've-got-no-clue-where-I-am-please-save-me boogaloo. Running around the level, scared of all the new and unfamiliar things that probably wanted to eat me, and desperately hoping I'd find them somewhere, I made my way through the level, with the same amount of coordination as before; that is, none. I felt quite hopeful when I eventually caught sight of one of them through the bars near that giant rat with the key to that shortcut near the bonfire with the boxes near the ladder and the grate floor, and I'm pretty sure that they noticed me, and they started running around with greater determination; I'm sure they must have known the level better than I did, and were navigating my way, so I stayed put, and eventually they caught up to me. They proceeded to guide me through the level, and I felt much better, and along the way we caught up with my other sunbro (I feel at this I should make sure that the reader is aware that the number of happy little jump emotes produced were copious, as was appropriate). We eventually found our way down to the gaping dragon, and started fighting it. I had brought pyromancies from Laurentius (but suffered the same range issues as last time for maybe half the fight); meanwhile, my two knight friends proceeded to get behind the lumbering beast and quite considerately cut off the tail for me; from this I learned proper cooperative tail-etiquette. After the tail was off and they stopped having to play around with positioning, the dragon basically disintegrated under their blows. Praise those sunbros.
After this, and still looking for direction, I went back to Firelink Shrine and entered the catacombs. I'd upgraded my Estoc to Divine long before, when it came up, so I didn't feel I needed to make any other stops. The skeletons were annoying; I know intellectually that they were probably weaker and less diverse than the DS3 skeletons, but they were an awful lot more dangerous to my fast-rolling everythingmancer. I was spooked by the angry floating head guys, but I suspected that they would explode or something, and guess what they do? My shield was already up, but the skeletons by that first ledge weren't so lucky. Going through the catacombs, it was basically a skeleton dungeon, I guess? I just poked them with my Estoc, or shot a few spells to soften them up if I was feeling spendy. All the necromancers warranted one-shots by heavy soul arrows, though, they had that coming to them. Running around eventually lead me to a pit with a staircase in it, and I started descending. 'oh boy' I thought, 'this must be that Nito pit I heard about, so I've got to drop down'. It was a pit. It wasn't the Nito pit. Instead, I got to watch a big skeleton walk up and knock a hole in the wall, a hole I would come to equate with despair. I had rested by that bonfire next to the boney blacksmith out of habit, you see, and that meant that I showed up there every time I died. And, pre-lord-vessel, that meant I was stuck there. I walked out, and my eight vitality was stunlocked out of me by a single skeleton. I guess you could say things did not go wheel for me. One of the fates had obviously misheard another when they were asked how my fight was to go; not weal nor woe, but wheel of woe! I was summoned for Pinwheel while I was down there, but did not summon in turn, because I didn't want to waste the humanity on the off chance I might get through. I dropped down into Pinwheel's coffin and proceeded to roast him in a single go, though; I thought pinwheel being a chump was a meme, and, you know? If I'd given him any more than the time of day before killing him, he might actually have been scary; his DPS was pretty good, even if he couldn't dodge to save his life. After beating him, I went up the other way in his coffin to the Tomb of Giants, and proceeded to fall down a pit. Right back to the wheel pit. I'm not going to go over the process of my escape any longer, save that I spent so long trying to deduct humanity from the empty stat with my deaths that it felt like it was starting to sap my will in real life. I navigated through there, killed the Black Axe Knight, killed the titanite demon, met up with Nito and his spooky coffin-express, and then suffered through a gauntlet to get back to the Firelink bonfire (I also found the Darkmoon Seance ring) (I once nearly made it back to the first bonfire, only to fight the skeletons outside of that chamber and die, right back into the wheel pit). I proceeded to adventure elsewhere.
I navigated my way through the sewers again, (still lost, but a little less so), and eventually came upon the Blighttown gates where that merchant guy was. I had been there my first go around the sewers, as a summon, but because the gate was also a fogwall I hadn't known what it was at the time. I had found the shortcut in the valley of the drakes, but didn't take it because I'd heard that it ruined the experience. Well, they were right, it would have. My first impression of Blighttown was the three ladders down, and then the walkway, and then the barbarians. They were tanky jerks, but weak to backstabbing; sometimes you could even backstab them off of the everpresent ledges. I was a bit more surprised by the jumpy ghoul guys, but my first experience with them was reaction-parrying one out of the air and one-shotting them with the riposte, which did a lot to nip any possible antipathy towards them in the bud. I also saw my first Vagrant there, one of the nice ones that doesn't shoot those billion homing soul masses at you; I died chasing it, but that was my fault for being hasty. After that, I proceeded further in, and encountered more of the ghoul guys; the barbarians seemed to be hard on the budget or something. I took a lot of duplicate soul arrows with me, so I wouldn't run out. Honestly, getting through Blighttown was a combination of ease and great difficulty; there are a lot of false paths and traps (like the floor that breaks if you fall down on it rather than walking, or the walkways that shift around as you walk on them, though I've never fallen off of one of those), but the ghoul guys were about standard as far as enemies went. Far harder were the fire doggos, which I couldn't reach with my pokey sword. I eventually found my way to that bonfire on that arch thing, the stone one, and then died a lot to that combo of the ghoul and the two fire dogs a whole bunch. Again, no lord vessel, so I was stuck there until I could progress. Eventually, by being summoned a bunch, I found the right way out and down, and proceeded to book it unceremoniously. Having not read any guide, I wandered through the apparently far safer lower swamp, coming across several places and those disgusting looking leeches, before making my way back towards the ominous bed bug looking hill thing. I was there killed by a flying boulder from a monster so large as to appear more like a decorational entity than something you were actually supposed to fight. Cue another climb back down, in human form, because I was feeling lucky, but this time I took the far route around them, and up the hill, where I found a cave. I descended, and proceeded to summon two guys just because I saw their signs. Imagine my surprise when I found that they had placed them there because around the next bend was the Quelaag fight. Well, we steamrolled her, basically, as jolly cooperators do (I get that you don't get the full experience of the battle unless you go it alone, but it's so much more fun to succeed with friends, even if you've only known them for an instant).
I made my way down to the bell, and it was rung, and then I saw the giant pull up the chains where that onion knight was sleeping. I also found the secret passage with the Fair Lady, and got to make use of my burial gift, finally. I gave her all my loose humanity, and got a neat giant fireball out of it, which came in more use as my build started relying more and more on my pyromancy to deal level appropriate damage.
Then the depths. I had no idea what was going on by this point, but I was willing to roll with it. I left my summon sign near the entrance to the area, before the hollow lunch place and the big butcher women, and was summoned a few times. I died those few times. Then I got summoned again, and didn't die that time. Honestly, I don't remember much about the guy himself, except that looking back on it I think he had the sunlight maggot hat, and his other friend was a sunbro. I learned where Laurentius was, that there was a second butcher woman, we smacked down some invader (I believe the term for unintentional ganks is gonking? Or is it just called bad luck?), and then we went through the sewers. Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing; I was so lost that I fell down a hole through a stream of water and ended up surrounded by rats and those weird slime things. Kirk showed up again, but I suppose technically this was my first time meeting him from a temporal perspective, and I kicked his butt -- at some point during this, the sunbro had found me and was roaming around with me trying to find the summoner guy, so that was my second invader ganked with that team, if we're counting NPCs, I guess. Eventually we found him fighting that channeler guy and some giant rats, and made our way down to fight the gaping dragon. The dragon was gaping. And a dragon, I guess. I spent a lot of that fight thinking I was helping, but assuming my soul arrows just really sucked; as it turned out, they were just slightly out of range, which made me feel silly, but we won. Then comes my turn. Cue many deaths, except this time I have to run back through the undead burg because I am dumb. I find Laurentius where he was in the other world, go to provoke the other butcher woman, backstab her, then go back and free him... only to get invaded. Guess who my very first Dark Souls invader was?
The Legend never dies, I guess, but I do, and in one hit to them, with my eight vitality. I was ameliorated by the meme, but I still felt it must not have been a very fun way to play the game. They were some youtuber, so I probably ended up in a cringe-ily titled fail compilation of some sort somewhere.
Anyways, I got back down there, picked up my stuff, and then proceeded on through the sewers. I still had no clue where I was going, but I eventually found the key to the depths bonfire, and then got back there. After a rest, I summoned two sunbros of my own, brilliantly beaming cooperators, and went through the sewer-maze of lostness part two, I've-got-no-clue-where-I-am-please-save-me boogaloo. Running around the level, scared of all the new and unfamiliar things that probably wanted to eat me, and desperately hoping I'd find them somewhere, I made my way through the level, with the same amount of coordination as before; that is, none. I felt quite hopeful when I eventually caught sight of one of them through the bars near that giant rat with the key to that shortcut near the bonfire with the boxes near the ladder and the grate floor, and I'm pretty sure that they noticed me, and they started running around with greater determination; I'm sure they must have known the level better than I did, and were navigating my way, so I stayed put, and eventually they caught up to me. They proceeded to guide me through the level, and I felt much better, and along the way we caught up with my other sunbro (I feel at this I should make sure that the reader is aware that the number of happy little jump emotes produced were copious, as was appropriate). We eventually found our way down to the gaping dragon, and started fighting it. I had brought pyromancies from Laurentius (but suffered the same range issues as last time for maybe half the fight); meanwhile, my two knight friends proceeded to get behind the lumbering beast and quite considerately cut off the tail for me; from this I learned proper cooperative tail-etiquette. After the tail was off and they stopped having to play around with positioning, the dragon basically disintegrated under their blows. Praise those sunbros.
After this, and still looking for direction, I went back to Firelink Shrine and entered the catacombs. I'd upgraded my Estoc to Divine long before, when it came up, so I didn't feel I needed to make any other stops. The skeletons were annoying; I know intellectually that they were probably weaker and less diverse than the DS3 skeletons, but they were an awful lot more dangerous to my fast-rolling everythingmancer. I was spooked by the angry floating head guys, but I suspected that they would explode or something, and guess what they do? My shield was already up, but the skeletons by that first ledge weren't so lucky. Going through the catacombs, it was basically a skeleton dungeon, I guess? I just poked them with my Estoc, or shot a few spells to soften them up if I was feeling spendy. All the necromancers warranted one-shots by heavy soul arrows, though, they had that coming to them. Running around eventually lead me to a pit with a staircase in it, and I started descending. 'oh boy' I thought, 'this must be that Nito pit I heard about, so I've got to drop down'. It was a pit. It wasn't the Nito pit. Instead, I got to watch a big skeleton walk up and knock a hole in the wall, a hole I would come to equate with despair. I had rested by that bonfire next to the boney blacksmith out of habit, you see, and that meant that I showed up there every time I died. And, pre-lord-vessel, that meant I was stuck there. I walked out, and my eight vitality was stunlocked out of me by a single skeleton. I guess you could say things did not go wheel for me. One of the fates had obviously misheard another when they were asked how my fight was to go; not weal nor woe, but wheel of woe! I was summoned for Pinwheel while I was down there, but did not summon in turn, because I didn't want to waste the humanity on the off chance I might get through. I dropped down into Pinwheel's coffin and proceeded to roast him in a single go, though; I thought pinwheel being a chump was a meme, and, you know? If I'd given him any more than the time of day before killing him, he might actually have been scary; his DPS was pretty good, even if he couldn't dodge to save his life. After beating him, I went up the other way in his coffin to the Tomb of Giants, and proceeded to fall down a pit. Right back to the wheel pit. I'm not going to go over the process of my escape any longer, save that I spent so long trying to deduct humanity from the empty stat with my deaths that it felt like it was starting to sap my will in real life. I navigated through there, killed the Black Axe Knight, killed the titanite demon, met up with Nito and his spooky coffin-express, and then suffered through a gauntlet to get back to the Firelink bonfire (I also found the Darkmoon Seance ring) (I once nearly made it back to the first bonfire, only to fight the skeletons outside of that chamber and die, right back into the wheel pit). I proceeded to adventure elsewhere.
I navigated my way through the sewers again, (still lost, but a little less so), and eventually came upon the Blighttown gates where that merchant guy was. I had been there my first go around the sewers, as a summon, but because the gate was also a fogwall I hadn't known what it was at the time. I had found the shortcut in the valley of the drakes, but didn't take it because I'd heard that it ruined the experience. Well, they were right, it would have. My first impression of Blighttown was the three ladders down, and then the walkway, and then the barbarians. They were tanky jerks, but weak to backstabbing; sometimes you could even backstab them off of the everpresent ledges. I was a bit more surprised by the jumpy ghoul guys, but my first experience with them was reaction-parrying one out of the air and one-shotting them with the riposte, which did a lot to nip any possible antipathy towards them in the bud. I also saw my first Vagrant there, one of the nice ones that doesn't shoot those billion homing soul masses at you; I died chasing it, but that was my fault for being hasty. After that, I proceeded further in, and encountered more of the ghoul guys; the barbarians seemed to be hard on the budget or something. I took a lot of duplicate soul arrows with me, so I wouldn't run out. Honestly, getting through Blighttown was a combination of ease and great difficulty; there are a lot of false paths and traps (like the floor that breaks if you fall down on it rather than walking, or the walkways that shift around as you walk on them, though I've never fallen off of one of those), but the ghoul guys were about standard as far as enemies went. Far harder were the fire doggos, which I couldn't reach with my pokey sword. I eventually found my way to that bonfire on that arch thing, the stone one, and then died a lot to that combo of the ghoul and the two fire dogs a whole bunch. Again, no lord vessel, so I was stuck there until I could progress. Eventually, by being summoned a bunch, I found the right way out and down, and proceeded to book it unceremoniously. Having not read any guide, I wandered through the apparently far safer lower swamp, coming across several places and those disgusting looking leeches, before making my way back towards the ominous bed bug looking hill thing. I was there killed by a flying boulder from a monster so large as to appear more like a decorational entity than something you were actually supposed to fight. Cue another climb back down, in human form, because I was feeling lucky, but this time I took the far route around them, and up the hill, where I found a cave. I descended, and proceeded to summon two guys just because I saw their signs. Imagine my surprise when I found that they had placed them there because around the next bend was the Quelaag fight. Well, we steamrolled her, basically, as jolly cooperators do (I get that you don't get the full experience of the battle unless you go it alone, but it's so much more fun to succeed with friends, even if you've only known them for an instant).
I made my way down to the bell, and it was rung, and then I saw the giant pull up the chains where that onion knight was sleeping. I also found the secret passage with the Fair Lady, and got to make use of my burial gift, finally. I gave her all my loose humanity, and got a neat giant fireball out of it, which came in more use as my build started relying more and more on my pyromancy to deal level appropriate damage.
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