Dark Souls: The Journal of Death Part 2

This looks like an appropriate setup for this game

Since my last Dark Souls post, I have made some more progress (and deaths) in the game.

But death isn't a big deal, even though you lose the souls you have found.  During my last post, I mentioned that as I crossed a bridge that had enemies I was prepared to take on, a giant dragon flew in and set me on fire, killing me instantly and losing souls that were acquired.

Fortunately, I was able to make it back to that point and pick up the souls that drop when you die.  If you are careful, death is not the worst thing that can happen because the souls (which is experience and also money) can be recovered if you get back to the point you died and collect them.  Most of the time I can do this, but it's still a good idea to use your souls once you save up a bunch.  First of all, you are going to need the extra levels and upgrades.  But more importantly, you can't take anything for granted in this game.  You could make a minor mistake and be killed even by an enemy that is supposed to not be difficult.

Anyway, what I discovered was a path below the main bridge that accomplished two things.  I avoided the dragon entirely, saving me another death.  Halfway through this lower path, you find a ladder you can knock down that gives you a shortcut back to the last campfire where you can restock your Estus Flasks and save your progress.  I was going to need it, of course, because a rat poisoned me shortly thereafter which would have killed me if I didn't rush back to the campfire.

Once I got past the rats, I arrived at the Undead Parish where some skeletons and a giant Armored Boar were waiting for me.  While the boar is strong, I don't know if it is considered a boss.  At first I thought the right approach would be to avoid the boar entirely, but then I discovered that the boar took significant damage if I got him to charge at me through a lit fire.  Since I had plenty of flasks, I let him charge at me twice and took hits, but the boar died and I was able to move on.  

After that I fought some more basic enemies and found a diverged path.  I could go right over what appeared to be a rickety, makeshift wood bridge, or left where there was something that resembled a church.  I read the messages left for me to give me hints (a key part of the game) and decided to go left which...was not my best decision.  I died fighting a giant knight.

Once I made it back that way I discovered that the path to the bridge led to a campfire and a blacksmith.  I upgraded a ton of stuff and beat some demon that shot lightening at me, and then proceeded further to more enemies in a forest.  I found a bunch of heavy armor by running around these other difficult enemies and went on to fight this moth that killed me.  To this day I don't think I have what I need to beat it, so I ended up retracing my steps.

Finally I realized that there was a path upwards in the church with the giant knight I talked about before.  The knight went down, and eventually I made my way up to the top of the church where I fought two gargoyles that I suppose were the bosses of the area.  Here's a picture.



This was a difficult fight since you had to shield yourself from fire from one gargoyle while the other gargoyle would aggressively attack you.  After 3 or 4 attempts I managed to be conservative enough to win.  The path unlocked, I climbed to the top of the tower, rang the ball and I guess "completed" that area.

It probably helped that I found a way to upgrade my Estus Flask to give me stronger healing.

At this point I continued to fight random enemies as I tried to figure out the next place to go.  I really had no idea.  Eventually I decided this weekend to go back to Firelink Shrine and retrace my steps from the beginning.  Around the part where the giant dragon lit me on fire I noticed there was a closed door which I now had a key to unlock and proceeded downward.

On a side note, I really like how the game puts in shortcuts back to the beginning.  The level design is really great because it is this huge world with clever little ways to quickly traverse once you discover them.

As I went further down, I eventually made it to a sewer with lots of poison/curse type enemies.  While these enemies were not difficult, I needed to be careful to avoid the status effects since they punish you badly.  I was cursed once and had to go all the way back to where I fought the gargoyles to find the item to heal my curse (at great expense of souls).  Eventually, I made it back down and stopped playing the game after losing one battle to this dragon.  It's a gaping dragon, apparently.  I don't know what that means, but it made a gape in me.



I wasn't damaging this guy that much, but I'm still confident I can take him down.  It may require some better weapons or a few levels, but I believe it's manageable.

That's where Dark Souls stands as of now.  More to come!

Dark Souls: The Journal of Death Part 1

This is burned into my retinas.

On Friday night I decided to take the plunge and give Dark Souls another shot and...it kept crashing.  Also, I had to mess with Games For Windows Live.  Clearly the game is fucking with me.  It wants me to understand frustration even while it tries to load.

After a complete uninstall, download, and reinstallation, I got the game running around midnight and got back into it.  Just picked up my save right where I left off, which was basically where the tutorial ended and I felt stuck.  Here's a picture.



This isn't really a spoiler, but there are several pathways it appears you can go on from this camp.  I tried two, which were the paths that I thought I had to take and just kept dying.  So my next strategy was to try to just kill a few enemies and go back and level, but I couldn't even manage to kill a guy and get back to camp to save my souls (experience awarded when killing an enemy that you lose if you die before saving).  I was starting to remember why I stopped playing.

And then...I found a different path.  All of a sudden the enemies were more manageable and I was actually making progress.  The game started to feel like it was making sense and I FOUND ANOTHER CAMPFIRE.  I was able to level up!  I finally managed to "get" it.  It seems like my big problem wasn't necessarily my skill in combat, but the path I set out on in the first place.

As I climbed this giant castle or ruin or whatever the fuck it was, I walked up to this bridge and this giant dragon just jumps on all of a sudden scaring the crap out of me.  Then it flew away.  Eventually I made it up to another bridge like area and fought some kind of minotaur called a Taurus Demon.



At my low level, it was pretty hard and I died the first time.  But after grinding a little bit I managed to make it through with one Estus Flask left at the end of battle.

Perhaps I should take a moment to explain the Estus Flask.  This appears to be the only healing item in the game but I don't know for sure.  As you can tell from the picture, the Estus Flask shows up in your active inventory just like your shield and sword.  If you press X on the Xbox 360 controller (I'm playing on PC with that controller) you use it.  But when you use it, your character stops for a moment leaving him totally exposed.  It's risky to use mid battle, but I had to so in order to heal I had to dash away from the action, use it, and quickly put up my guard.  You start off with 10 Estus Flasks that you can recharge at your camp.  I'm not totally sure why, but the first camp I found I had to kindle the fire before it would charge me back up to 10 flasks instead of 5.  To kindle the fire, first you have to use your humanity, which is the number in the upper left corner.  I believe this number goes up eventually after defeating a certain amount of enemies or just finding humanity after a battle.  Then you need one more humanity to kindle the fire.  Took me a little time. But whatever.  Just another part of the challenge.

Getting back to the Taurus Demon, I had to use most of my flasks to beat him.  If I was a more skilled player I think he could probably be beaten without that level of consumption, but keep in mind that for me and anybody else at this point in the game mastering the mechanics to the level you need to really crush these enemies is unrealistic.

Once you beat him you get the "VICTORY ACHIEVED" message, and unlike all of the other monsters in the game, this one does not respawn when you visit a camp.  After I won I proceeded along the path until I reached this bridge with a few enemies on it.  In my head I thought it would be no problem to take out these enemies, so I run in with my shield up and...that fucking dragon from before swoops in and lights the entire bridge on fire, killing me instantly.  At the time I didn't know if the boss I just faced would respawn, but fortunately he didn't and I figured out a way to move past the dragon without a fight.

That's pretty much where I stopped.  There are a few other things to note about this game.  The first is that you really have to be mindful about who you take on and when.  If you are carrying a lot of souls, you should really try to save and level up first before taking on something unknown.  You can recover souls that you have lost as a human after dying, but it's not always easy.  Reading the hints that are left for you on the ground (an online feature) can be helpful, but at times is cryptic.

My world was also "invaded" at some point and someone just showed up and killed me pretty easily.  I'm pretty sure that was another online thing.  From what I could tell, I was just dramatically underleveled to face this enemy, so I'm not sure if there was anything I could have done about it.  This is just another reason why it's wise to save often.  Fortunately this one didn't cost me too much.

I hope to continue playing tonight and make more progress.  For this game, I hope to continue making a journal since it is such a different experience.  Clearly, the satisfaction that anybody will get out of this game will be based strictly upon whether you can tolerate failure and challenge.  If taking your time with a game is not something that you enjoy, you should avoid Dark Souls.  But I found that as I made tiny bits of progress I enjoyed the game more and wanted to continue to take on the challenge.

More to come...