Dark Souls

[Ultima Shadow]

I forgot to add that the Drake did catch me by surprise on the bridge the first time around too, reducing me to ashes in an instant. Guards in Skyrim sometimes say: "watch the skies, traveler", trying to warn you about dragon attacks. That line seem to apply more to Dark Souls though, since the dragons in Skyrim usually tell you they are coming with their roars like five minutes before actually attacking... unlike this sneaky, ambushing Drake-bastard.


Anyhow, I went downstairs from the blacksmith and found a not-so nice guy trying to shoot me down with electric stuff. Not too hard to evade though, so I bought like 300 wooden arrows for my shortbow which I had also bought from a nice little undead merchant earlier in the Undead Burg. Then, back to that lightning-shooting semi-boss guy and running left and right, firing a large amount of puny little arrows while dodging those lightning-balls until he finally went down.


Before I went too far into the area behind that guy (Darkroot Guarden I think it was), I went back to the church though since there was some places in there I had yet to explore. After taking down a couple of semi-tough opponents and a hoard of weak zombies/undeads, I climb some ladders and find one of those white mist-doors. At this particular moment, I have almost 4000 souls - which might not be a huge amount later on, but at this moment felt like a lesser fortune. Or at the very least worth like 2-3 level ups (I was level 18). But before the thought "returning to the bonfire before I lose it all" crossed my mind, I found myself entering the white door... and a few seconds later found myself face to face with a big Gargoyle swinging its massive weapon at my face. I managed to survive until a second Gargoyle joined in, but then I got overwhelmed and died.

"Owned."

...so, I had the choice to just leave all of those 4000 souls behind, or... I could go all the way back and try my luck once more. Of course, I went with the later. And got my ass handed to me again. Now, since I killed some more guys on my way to those Gargoyles the second time, and did manage to "recover" my dead body before dying again, the amount of souls on stake had increased a little bit as well. So I obviously headed back a third time. With similar results. However... after a little while I did start to get the hang of it, tried to get the first Gargoyle down as fast as possible (after recovering my body which I did first of all each time) by two-handing my weapon and then switching to sheild when only one remained... and on my maybe 8th-10th or so attempt I finally beat them, not only recovering my lost souls but also gaining an additional whooping 15,000. Plus, I rang the first bell. Yarrr!



So... I guess it's time to head down and try reaching this Blight Town place where the second bell is supposed to be.



But before that, I headed to the Darkroot Garden. Since I got myself a Black Knight Sword from one of the two black knights I killed, I leveled up my strength and dexterity until I could wield it. And damn does it hit hard, but damn does it hit slow. I'm using it as a secondary weapon atm, for those moments when pure power is required. Two-shotting the sleeping giant guys in the Darkroot Garden before they even manage to stand up properly was a pretty good use for it for example. I also found the elite knight armour which look pretty awesome. My "Pyromancer" is turning more and more into a warrior-style character.

I made it to that flying butterfly-like boss at the end of Darkroot Garden and beat it on my second try. Almost got it on first try, but screwed up the timing once when trying to evade its energy bullets and was basically instant-killed by having 3 of them hit me at the same time.



And before heading down towards the second bell far below, I decided to visit one last area. The other Darkroot place with these crystal golems. And there... in the far distance... I saw it. Something that I thought was waaay too far away to even notice me. And yet, suddenly... all of its heads spewed light, all aimed at me, and...

"Hydra - 1. Shads - 0."
Other deaths, aside from those already mentioned,
included but were not limited to: getting ganked by
trees, eaten by trees and getting slaughtered by
giants while being distracted by trees."