Dark Souls 3

Wow, you killed two angels? I accidentally found one of their “anchors” and killed it, but man was I ever not going to go fucking around in that swamp while getting mangled by the lightspears to find another one.

That boss…yeah, I tried it once or twice before calling in not one but two sunbros. That was at my nadir with the game, like man fuck this it’s just getting absurd, I just wanna be done. It wasn’t until I got well through the city proper that I felt good about things again. People talk about DS2 being just “hard for the sake of being hard,” but I (as a non-DS2 completer) still think that the Ringed City is just sadistic and mostly not really “fun”.

This ain’t giving me the motivation I need to get back in the "ring"ed city.

Well, once I got to the church things really evened out. The Demon’s Souls throwback fight was a blast, Midir was…sure as hell something and beating it was probably the high point of my Souls experience, pulse-wise (although Orphan of Kos sure comes close!), and the final fight was superb, so you’ve got all that to look forward to!

So I spent a couple hours in the Ringed City with my summon sign down in the second bonfire. I was summoned as the boss twice, which is a break for the player because as the summoned I get no estus and I just don’t have the patience (or ability) to win that kind of fight.

I also got summoned for Midir several times. In probably 8 trips to fight Midir the best I have done was me and the guy who summoned me once got Midir down to about 20% health.

But the fun stuff is getting summoned to help a player get from bonfire 2 to bonfire 3. I have done that several times in the last couple days and have been involved in some massive PvP play. Invaders love to invade in that area, and you add in the regular enemies and it gets pretty crazy. I once picked up almost 300k souls from one summon. I can only think it was a not too high NG+ host.

I ran into a very high NG+ Pontiff summons the other day. I don’t think I have ever been hit that hard by any enemy before.

Yea, the second is hardest to find. The third you are actually kind of led to it if you explore the tree area.

Are you talking about the so-called “abyssal swamp” area? I got invaded there a couple times, and one time I was just about to take a run at the Dragonslayer Armor that hangs out on the far side of that when I got invaded, so I just sat down on that big, quiet strip of land to wait for them. Watched them running around over by the sunken cathedral and such looking for me. Eventually they just waved off and exited. Pretty funny. Not sure I’ve been invaded there other than that. Actually I was invaded very, very seldom in DS3, especially if you don’t count covenant invasions for trespassing specific areas.

The groups I was with kept getting invaded at the top of the stairs or in the building with the annoying magic casters. But the fights usually stretched all the way down to the swamp because the invader/invaders would use those big guys as cover.

I did get summoned once and started at the first bonfire, before the archer guys, and finally ended after we had cleared the entire swamp, including the Dragonslayer guy. That player gifted me 10 embers when we finally finished. But he/she was very good. I think he/she just needed some backup for the invaders.

I think invasions, especially groups like that, are friends who arrange to hit certain areas. But that is a very popular area for them. Heck, I have seen invasions occur at the place where you get dropped off at the start of the Ringed City.

Most of the popular invasion spots are where they are because they’re among the few locations where the invader can prevent the host from just running back to the bonfire and waiting when they see the notification - either because the area is circular (Farron, Archives) or because the bonfire becomes inaccessible (Ringed City entry). Part of the fun of real invasions instead of just duels is the cat & mouse game and using the enemies/environment, but the game’s default of always spawning invaders ahead of the host in the level’s linear progression makes that difficult in the majority of areas.

Huh? I found DS2 to be the easiest From Souls game. (barring very specific and optional DLC gauntlets that are designed for co-op)

I have done a little invading but I am just not cut throat enough. I feel bad about preventing someone from advancing in their game. But I keep telling myself I will do more of it.

Just curious, which version did you play? Sins of the Father edition, or plain vanilla custard edition?

I have played through both. OG on PS3 and Sins + DLC on PC.

Alright, back to the exploration.

So I know it’s really intuitive that if you step into lava, you’ll die, but this game kind of fosters an attitude of “gotta try it at least once”. I mean come on, they put two shiny loot right down the hall, where you have to walk through lava to get to them. Hence I walked into the lava to see how quickly it killed me.

The answer was not surprising.

After going through about 3 hidden walls in that area, (thank you very much Dark Souls 3 message community), I met my demise thanks to a little cute dwarf knight kitted out in really heavy armor. I kept getting him for a while, but the moment I got a little wreckless, one hit, dead. That little guy is not messing around!

I’m glad all the enemies in this game are not as emasculating.

Oh gosh, is this Fun Slayer Tsorig, as I called him upthread? That guy probably killed me a dozen times on both characters I face him with. Each.

Tsorig, yes. That is his name. I know that now, since he’s killed me three more times. I love that FROM shows off every once in a while by creating an enemy like this, who is so good at switching from shield to two handed and doing light attacks or heavy attacks, who can dodge and block. Of course, he has a huge damage advantage over the player (he kills me in one hit if two-handing, two hits if one-handing), so that’s a big factor, but still, you’d think a player could destroy an NPC like this, but no, he’s good enough that he’s a showoff.

The lava there is relentless.

I fight the version that invades in the Catecombs, but the one that lives in the other area I leave alone. He is truly bad ass.

So in my replay with the Herald/spear only, I’ve been moving along at a pretty good clip, but now I’m back at what I think may be the toughest early/mid-game section, which is the slog in the Cathedral to make it over the roof and then around a corner past 2 Cathedral Grave Wardens to try to open up a shortcut to the bonfire. Woof

I have been summoned into that fight a lot and I am surprised how helpful Lapp is. And yes, the laser demon is much easier. I also leveled up a Black Knight Sword for that fight.

That early in the game you run into some pretty hard hitting enemies, as well as an NPC invader.

It is a bit of a slog, but I still enjoyed my time in the Cathedral a lot. Don’t forget to stop and marvel at the architecture. I also like that this giant Cathedral has developed its own post-apocalyptic eco-system with sections of it used by different types of creatures, including two giants and slug creatures and worshippers and other things.