I also have decided to join the dragon cov, can you tell me where/when I can do that?
go to blightown, in the swamp area, head opposite from the chaos witch entrance, and you see a big tree, and a ramp up the tree. go up, there will be a dead end. one of the wall is a fake wall, hit it, and then you see a chest, behind the chest is another fake wall. go through that, follow that path all the way to the end.
eventually you get to an area called grey lake, it looks like the forest that dragon was slumbering at in the intro movie, run all the way to the end, you will see a giant dragon and you can join the covenant, it’s a LOOOOOONG run, and there are some tough miniboss on the way so.
An item I haven’t acquired yet is in the Firelink shrine, on the top of one of the buildings. You can see it when you ride the elevator up to the church. I’ve tried jumping off as it goes up and followed the path to the building, but to no avail. How do I get up there?
you are on the right path, once you jump off the elevator, follow path to the right side to the mountain ledge, from there you can roll on to one of the spire/support of the church, then you can run up to into upper floor of the church, the item is a key to undead asylum 2nd floor. if you look up, you can see the crow nest, basically if you get up to the crow nest, you can curl up in to a ball, and wait for a bit, crow will bring you back to tutorial area, with optional boss(very very hard) and some neat items, you can unlock the door that you can’t unlock in the tutorial, there is a ring that let you run at normal speed in the swamp(useful).
I think I’m like 40% through the game, I managed to join 4 covenant(forest hunter/Dragon/Chaos Witch/Dark Wraith, currently in Dark Wraith(pain in the ass to get in), best weapon BY FAR is a lightning spear you can get in a dungeon after you rang the 2 bells, drake sword doesn’t hold a candle to it.
The problem I have with dark soul’s weapon system is with the attribute bonus on weapons, good enchanted weapon gain 0 bonus from attribute, the lightning spear I picked up deal 160 physical and 160 lightning damage with req 10 str and 14 dex, but doesn’t gain bonus from attributes… there is basically 0 incentive for me to put points in str/dex/int because how overpowered the spear is.