Attempted the Rotten once again, unlocked the second bonfire I didn't realize was in the room. I am having serious issues with him. He hits like a truck and can generally cleave me in two, and if I'm not getting thrown around by his attacks, he's making me walk through his fire traps all over the place which also does way more damage than you would think. I try to stay close and circle him, but I have this bad tendency to get the camera "stuck" on him which makes reading his attacks very difficult since the camera decides to zoom in on me, and through him, so I can only see parts of his model which makes it hard to know when to roll.

So I dropped that and decided to go back to the Shaded Woods, and after getting a ton of my equipment destroyed in that awful Basilisk Trap in the main area, I was able to wander over and fight the Scorpion chick, who thankfully, didn't give me as hard of a time as her counterpart in DS1. This led to the Door of Pharos, where I found the boss room fairly quickly, and my bow came in handy with the normal mobs. I'm happy I went with the Dragonrider Bow since it not only does more damage than my poor shortbow, but also does magic damage, which makes it surprisingly useful against things with high physical defense. The Rat King's Authority is a bitch though. The freaking Toxic wolves are a bit of a cheap shot and I'm stuck in an awkward situation where I have to decide to sacrifice defense for speed and stamina recovery. The boss hits hard, but he would be manageable if I didn't have to worry about his toxic minions and the fact that despite having what I'm told is a fairly high adaptibility stat, chugging Estus is still criminally slow. To the point I've given up on using Estus in fights altogether cause it leaves me way too vulnerable.

If the last few areas have taught me anything though, it's that I may either need to explore and find new gear, or I'm going to have to seriously find more regular and large Titanite shards cause all my gear has only been upgraded once or twice. The Rotten might be manageable if I could do decent damage to him, whereas the Rat Authority can be dealt with by putting some more points towards Endurance and trying to stay under him. Course, I guess I should suck it up and go fight the Skeleton Lords since they are the only thing standing in my way of obtaining the only person who sells Titanite.