I finished the Iron Keep, and as typical of the Souls franchise, I'm not a fan of their lava zones. Though I'll give the Iron Keep props for level design cause the main issue with Izalith was that it was kind of boring besides being filled with annoying enemies and the worst bosses in the game.

Smelter Demon was certainly a challenge, and thank god for Lucretia who is easily this games Solaire in terms of being a powerful summonable ally that can actually tank damage. Made that fight more manageable once he goes into his third phase and starts using a flame sword that can reach across the room. Funny enough, I died more times to the rematch Pursuer fight than any of the actual bosses, and I ultimately gave up on trying to beat him cause I just can't seem to get his timing down to dodge or block, and I don't really have any more Human Effigies at the moment.

I was not happy with the return of the Turtle Knights or the second coming of the Anor Londo Archers, but thankfully my fully upgraded sword wrecks most of them. As for the Old Iron King, he was pretty easy. In fact I probably died more times not looking where I was going and walking into the lava hole on the map than actually getting hurt from him. I'm chuckling to myself about the DeMocracy Video about DS2 Bosses where he basically summarized the Old Iron King as a joke with a 2 out of 10 difficulty ranking, and then followed it up by saying that the hole ranked at 10 out of 10 difficulty, "Please FROM Software, nerf it in the next patch".

I met Adlai I believe, which was interesting, and I lit the first bonfire in the new DLC area like I did with the other one. The area is gorgeous by the way, finally a zone on par with Anor Londo or the Painted World in terms of excellent visual design. Now that I have the Four Old Ones, I'll be heading towards the new areas. I may do a little co-op before that just to regain my humanity and to build up my covenant some more since I'm working on a Strength/Faith build for this run, and I read that while my main weapon can't use items to boost it's elemental powers, it does get bonus from the Sunlight Sword Miracle. Considering how many things are weak to Lightning in this game, it feels like a good build to work towards.