@Zero
Ah, I getcha. Well, I think if you were to look at the tower when you see it in Darkroot Basin it'd be a bit more...towery.

From what I can tell, the game's pretty non-linear. Kind of? There are certain areas that you need to visit before others (mostly in the beginning, I think), but you can also do a lot of stuff in different orders. Like you say, you can visit the Basin before the Blighttown and you can visit Blighttown without going into the Depths and you can do all sorts of stuff. At least when you have the master key.

I think you're doing things more or less the way I did them, 'cause there seems to be a route that you'll gravitate towards as feeling more natural. Mostly because you get your ass kicked when straying from it, I suppose. You could have gone in a different direction entirely and have visited a handful of other places before even realizing the depths or Darkroot even being things, I think.

Haven't played in awhile, but picked it up again today.

Made it through Blighttown. I actually don't think it is as bad as its reputation. But after finally getting down to the swamp and running all over the damn place continually getting poisoned until I eventually died, I decided to look up the location of the next bonfire, and it turns out I was like RIGHT THERE near the place you come from but I ran off in the wrong direction. Ug. Wish they made bonfires harder to miss. It was easy enough to get back there though.

Beat the spider boss too. With two summons again, lol.

There are a few paths open to me now. In the swamp there is a huge tree and an elevator that I didn't really follow up on, and then past the boss there is a new area, and also ringing the second bell opened that big gate from earlier on. Not sure what the ideal way to go is but I guess I'll just explore and see what happens.

@Zero
Blighttown is pretty great. I think I said this before, but I have to imagine a lot of the hate it gets is due to the framerate issues it had in the original version. Well, that and the blowdart snipers, but I actually don't think they're all that bad. Especially not since they don't respawn. When I first ran into them and saw how fast the toxic status ate away at me I was not a happy man, but when I realized they don't come back I felt like it was a pretty fair deal.

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have gear to help me both traverse the swamp and resist the poison damage when I got there, so I didn't have to die looking for the bonfire.

I had a hard time with Quelaag though, or rather with the camera during the fight. For some damn reason I kept getting the camera stuck either in between her and a wall or in between her legs. I died twice because of that simply because I had no idea where I was or what she was up to. When the camera behaved she wasn't a big deal.

@r_hjort Enemies that don't respawn are kind of odd, at least for smaller ones, I didn't even realize that at first, thought it was a glitch.

There was also *something* that was shooting like 100 arrows at once (literally just a huge cloud of arrows comes at you) at me from far away the first few times I went through the area and then it just... stopped doing it in subsequent times? No idea what it was or why it stopped happening.

@Zero
What? That sounds insane. Either that's a really cool glitch or I've missed out on or something neat. What area was it?

It's in upper Blighttown, near the part where you can't really go forward anymore and have to hopping down towards the path to the swamp.

Come to think of it I don't think I ever ran into this when I played the game on PS3. It didn't feel like a glitch though, just felt like they were trying to recreate that feeling in movies when a whole wall of arrows is raining down on someone.

Like this but like... only 100? arrows or so, all aimed at me and hitting more or less around the same time. Seemed to be coming from somewhere past that big "wall hugger" monster thingy. But it only happened to me the first 3 or 4 times I was over there, never again? Hmm. Then again by that point I started jumping down to the lower areas earlier, so maybe I just avoided its trigger area or something?

@Zero
Could it have been the monster doing the attack? I took one look at that thing and decided that 'nope', and just hung back killing it with arrows, so I never saw it do anything. Or maybe it's a trap that I never triggered? I really want to go back and take a look for myself but I don't have an active save right now.

Don't think so, as far as I know that thing doesn't attack unless you are right near it. This wiki seems to suggest the same.

Any recommendations on where to go next? Everywhere I go seems to brutalize me.

I'm now at Sen's Fortress since it unlocked in the cutscene after the last boss or whatever, but I seem to have a ton of options right now. And those stupid snake guys are just killing me fast (though they do seem weak against fire...)

Is this a good spot to keep moving forward from!? I notice in a lot of FAQs they put the Basin before Blighttown, but the Basin seemed pretty intense to me when I went there.

I feel like a bunch of options opened (or I stumbled upon them) all at once...

@Zero
I'm by no means an expert, but I'd probably go with Sen's Fortress. Those snake guards deal a ton of damage if you don't have some heavy-ish armor, but you can pick off some of them from a distance (lightning is effective as well, I think, btw) and some of them can be lured into traps and pits. That's probably the worst part of Sen's Fortress, IMO. The fortress itself. But when you know where to go and what happens where it's not too bad.

I don't have lightning?!

Another thing this game doesn't do particularly well is like... it's just very unclear to me what kind of spells and such I could even have by now, and where I would find them. My only attack spell is still the basic fire one I started with. Sure I could look it all up in a guide or something but I wish there was more in-game direction.

Man, people complain about Blighttown but I think Sen's Fortress is way more annoying. Tons of traps that catch you if you're not just inching ahead constantly looking for them. Skinny platforms with things that knock you off and basically one hit kill you. While mages are shooting shit at you. The logic of how traps work in this game is not always clear, so sometimes you just kind of need to wing it and hope for the best.

After many tries I got pretty far in nonetheless, PRETTY sure I must have been close to a bonfire (unless I already passed it, which is super possible in this game) but there was a super skinny crossing with a bunch of swinging thingys and a mage wailing on me and I had nothing to do but run for it and... got knocked off of course.

Anyway, so I think, I need something long range to take out these mages. And looked, and apparently I could totally already have soul arrows by now, or to be more specific, by LONG AGO. Of course I missed the guy who sells the key that you use to unlock the other guy who sells them to you. I forget if I got these in the past, but I think I did? Just totally forgot they exist. Not even sure if they will do the trick, but it is good to at least have another tool in my arsenal now.

We'll see what happens.

Welp, got through Sen's Fortress somewhat easily with the soul arrow thingys or whatever they are called. Beat the Iron Golem too. Decided to actually try to beat it without summoning, but after multiple tries I couldn't even get the health down much more than 1/4. I know you can supposedly knock it down by hitting its foot enough but I sure could never get that to happen. So I did my usual strategy of summon and let them do all of the work.

Got somewhat far into the next area too, which hasn't been too bad so far, especially once I stopped trying to fight the huge knights.

One thing I don't really like about this game is how weird it is about getting back to the Firelink Shrine. Like, I rescued Big Hat Logan, and I imagine he will be in the Firelink Shrine, would like to see what spells he has for me but I have no idea how I would even get back there at this point besides backtracking through Sen's Fortress again, just to see what he has and then... go forward through Sen's Fortress again to get back to where I was? Bah.

Looking at a FAQ and... I'm pretty darn far into the game? For some reason I always thought Blighttown was only like 1/4 of the way through the game but it looks closer to 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through, and I'm a bit further than that now so probably more than halfway?

First off, that part with the two guys shooting those huge bolt arrows at you while you're on a skinny rooftop and a single hit will send you careening over the edge... ug. But I got past it.

And now Ornstein and Smough... UG. Even with a summon (Solaire) I got destroyed. It didn't help that he got hit a bunch before even getting to the boss and came in there with like 3/4 health. Not even sure where to go with this one. Some FAQs suggest getting two summons, NPC Solaire and a real life player, but I'm not really sure where to summon a real life player from. And since humanity is a limited thing, I hesitate to use more (I do have a ton, but still.)

For now I actually decided to backtrack through Sen's Fortress, I probably need to level up a bit and I figured might as well check out some other areas while I do it. Not even really sure where all I can go from here, but I still haven't done much in Darkroot Basin and I know there are a few bosses down there. It shouldn't be too tough to get through Sen's Fortress again, once I figured out its intricacies it was pretty easy and I'm at a bit higher level now as well.

BTW I stopped using spoiler tags in here since it seems like only me and people who have already played through the game are in here, but if anyone wants me to start again I will.

Beat the hydra and the wolf with a giant sword, both of which were overwhelming before but not too bad now. Mind you I tried the wolf melee style a few times and it kept nailing me with this double spin attack that even if I blocked would still take off most of my health, so it seemed nearly impossible that way, at least with my current equipment. So I just loaded up on spells and stayed back and kept throwing spells at it.

Speaking of that wolf, it feels so bad killing it since near the end it is basically just limping around. Apparently there was a rumour you could let it survive but FAQs say there is no way.

But it did give me 40k souls so I was able to level up a bit!

FAQs say the wolf is a required boss but I'm not quite sure what beating it unlocks?! There was no path forward from the battle so I just backed out.

Anyway I didn't want to go back to the Ornstein and Smough fight yet since they would probably just murder me again, so I looked at a FAQ and there are a few secret areas I haven't done yet so I'm working on those now. I hate relying on FAQs so much but there is so much about this game you can easily miss without a FAQ. At the Great Hollow now, which is a secret within a secret which is probably why I didn't find it the first time around (found the first secret, didn't really check if there were more secrets inside of the secret...)

BTW speaking of Ornstein and Smough I was looking at a video FAQ and the player had health and stamina bars like twice the size of mine and was still like "this is a very hard fight"... what the. How would I even... did they level up nothing but health and stamina?!

TOO LATE.

Climbing back up wasn't too bad though. I only died once, and it was because I was running around that area that has holes in the ground without paying attention.

Still, was it actually worth it otherwise? I dunno. It was an interesting diversion I guess. Maybe the hydra had something worthwhile, I dunno, I got CURSED in the tree so at half health the Hydra could 1-hit kill me, so I didn't even bother trying to beat it. The dragon covenant doesn't seem particularly great and I got the sword by cutting off its tail but I'm way too low of a level to use it. I also got some magic barrier spell, which sounds nice, but again, nowhere near high enough level to use it anytime soon.

Probably the most useful thing I got which I can actually use right now is the ring that regains your stamina quicker. Seems like a pretty sweet ring actually, will help a BUNCH I think, especially with blocking during boss fights. I've died so many times because my block wasn't *quite* quick enough due to waiting for stamina to refill.

HOLYYYYYY COW.

So I fought the end boss in the painting world, at first she was annoying me and I was wondering if I made a mistake in attacking her because I couldn't seem to hit her at all and she would instantly wreck me, but once you get her visible she is a piece of cake.

Anyway after beating her I had around 40k souls. So I think well all I have to do is leave the painting and get through that room of assassin dudes to get to the save, no big deal. Even if I did it should be easy enough to get back there.

AND I DIED.

AND IT DIDN'T BRING ME BACK TO THE LAST BONFIRE, IT BROUGHT ME TO THE FIRST BONFIRE IN ANOR LONDO FOR SOME REASON.

Honestly not sure of the logic there. I get that they don't want to stick you back in the painting but why not at least put me at the bonfire I saved at before going in, you know, the one right by the painting?!

So I had to do that super annoying part where you're up on the skinny rafters using controls definitely not made for walking on skinny rafters knowing that one tiny mistake will lose me 40k souls. SO TENSE. And even when I made it across one of those dudes still almost killed me.

But I made it to my souls. Whew.

So I basically did most everything else I could find to do and I'm like 13 or 14 levels higher than my last attempt, at something like 64 or so which is very high based on where FAQs say you should be, with better gear and such so I tried again and...

JESUS CHRIST ORNSTEIN AND SMOUGH. THESE GUYS.

Solo it's just like... why even bother? I can't do much without them tag-teaming me right to death.

Summoning with Solaire, I've been able to kill one off Ornstein and get to powered up Smough but not consistently and then Solaire usually dies right away anyway and I lose against Smough.

So I summoned a random summon I found (honestly not sure if it was a player or an NPC) AND Solaire and the random survived into the second battle with a lot of health, but they weren't really helping much... just kept shooting magic and mostly missing, which is weird, since Smough is large and slow it should be easy to hit him with magic! It helped a little to have a distraction I guess.

Everyone online is like "once you get to Smough alone it is easy" but that move Smough has where he jumps into the air and comes down with a lightning butt-stomp is pretty much a one-hit KO for me so that is what usually kills me. I guess I should just try to stay very, very far away and throw whatever magic I have left at him? Eventually I will probably need to get in close though and he wrecks me.

The sucky thing is you can't just keep trying over and over, at least, you can't if you want summons, because you need to use humanity and it can run out. I actually still have about 20 at the moment but I've already wasted 4 or 5 on this fight alone so it's tough to want to keep wasting more without a real winning strategy here. And of course if you need more the only places to farm them are... nowhere near where you are.

The other sucky thing is, it's not a particularly long trek to the boss from the bonfire, but it's an annoying one because you have to flip the switch and move the big platform and blah blah blah. I know this is DARK SOULS and it is BRUTAL and whatever but these kind of things are just annoying.

BAH.

YES. BEAT THOSE FUCKERS.

Though really more accurate is the human and AI players I summoned beat them while I just tried to stay alive for the most part, but whatever, it worked.

I leveled up a bunch first, spent time farming stuff to upgrade my weapons, etc. The funny thing and I'm not sure it mattered much since I barely did anything but stay alive and throw some spells out here and there.

But maybe it gave me the edge? It did get a little scary near the end, both of my summons actually took out Smough first so we had powered up Ornstein left to face and I'd only faced him once so I didn't know his moves well and how bad they damage you and such. And then both of my summons died off when he had a little bit of health left and I'm like no big deal, I can solo finish this no problem... but it got close! One hit from him would take off more than half my health, so every time he hit me I had to try to get a heal in before he could hit me again which didn't leave much time for attacks. Every once in awhile he would get caught up on a pillar and that is when I'd throw a spell at him, and it only took a few more hits to get him.

Whew.

Supposedly this is the hardest boss in the game so it's smooth sailing from here, eh? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Welp, it's definitely been smooth sailing since those two jerks. Burned through a few more areas without much trouble. The 4 kings were a little annoying at first since there is no save anywhere near them but then I disco... ok fine I looked at a FAQ... so I "found" the shortcut where you can just kind of run to them without really having to fight anyone on the way. Still a bit annoying since you're starting at Firelink every time but once I realized that they barely move and barely take off any health with most of their attacks I just used the spell that constrains your walking but gives you more defense and just 2 handed the heck out of them. Still was a close one but I pulled it off.

So yeah I'm in the demon area now and according to FAQs it is sort of more or less a straight shot to the end now. Will I actually finally defeat Dark Souls?

There is also the DLC world (which is contained on Remastered) and I will probably do that but I'm getting a bit burnt out and I heard the boss is annoying as hell so we'll see.

Does anyone know if you have to do the DLC world before beating the "end" of the main game? Probably not because it was DLC, right?