Weird night.

Helped a player fight off the twin Pursuer duel and then got killed in the Nashandra fight by being too greedy and her curse damage knocked enough of my health down for her AoE attack to finish me and the guys other summon off.

Remembered that the room with all the living statues had one of the Pilgrim of the Dark areas, but instead opted to start with the one in the Black Gulch cause it's way more annoying to reach. Ended up completing that zone and the one in the Faded Woods, as well as light their torches. Luckily wasn't hit with any Player Invaders but I imagine that will change in the last area since it's a high level zone.

Opted to not to finish that quest-line and instead tackled Aava and took him down rather easily. He's powerful but his attacks miss more than I thought they would. Met the Priestess and finally melted all of the snow. Now, being the idiot that I am, I ventured back into the city to collect the knights she was talking about, as well as grab all those treasures I was denied. Ended up finding an elevator and reached this place with an NPC Invader, some ice hedgehogs, and some nasty Ice Wizards. Cleared out everything and was sitting on close to 85,000 Souls but I was really hoping to find the optional area and a bonfire. Met this odd White Phantom, who never attacked me and even used gestures. Kind was paranoid around him but against my better judgment likely due to my low supplies of healing items, I ignored him and found this lever. About the time I used it, this phantom back stabbed me and killed me in one shot. Kicked myself for being stupid. Went back to collect my souls but missed with one of my arrows and watched as one of the ice hedgehogs murdered me...

Was going to call it a night when one of the guys I friended during some of the help I got in the Old Iron King DLC messaged me and asked if I could help him with Elena. So I went and helped him take down the Squalor Queen and was getting ready to help him with Sihn when my PS3 started to lose contact with my internet (my internet is pretty awful in my area unfortunately) and kept getting shot into offline mode. Figured this was a sign to call it a night and here I am telling my exploits.

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For the most part, there are only a few zones I really dislike in the series so far.

Demon's Souls - The Valley of Defilement, easily the most obnoxious poisonous swamp area in the series for me. Like I don't know why people even complain about Blighttown or the Gutter cause neither have anything on that place.

Dark Souls - Sen's Fortress sucked cause I don't really tank damage and prefer to roll my way through situations and overwhelm opponents, so tight corridors with strong enemies with high poise are the bane of my existence. I also disliked New Londo before you unflood it. Largely cause I find the Ghost enemies to be one of the few really unfair opponents in the game, especially if you were like me and were unfortunate enough to get cursed super early in the game and had to try and venture through there early to get uncursed. I'm still salty about it.

For Dark Souls 2, the only area I really hate in the main game so far has been the Black Gulch cause that whole zone is designed for maximum frustration and even at higher levels that can easily deal with most of the stuff it throws at you, it's still a chore to get through. Of the DLC, I can so far agree with the general consensus of the fanbase and say the "Optional Hardcore Zones" have all been the weakest if not the most frustrating parts of the DLC. I died over a dozen times trying to beat each of those zones but it was never fun and I'm usually sighing with relief when the boss gets taken out, and I'm actually fine with not going back through them to get every item. With that said, I died about the same amount of times trying to take down Fume Knight and Alonne and had a blast in both cases despite that, though I could have down without the lead up to Alonne. My main issue with areas in DS2 so far is that I often feel more "meh" about them than I feel I should.

Sadly, much like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, the DLC has been of such excellent quality in terms of dungeon design and bosses that the main entry has tough competition in terms of my favorite places and boss battles, and it's kind of hard to remember any of them cause the DLC is so good at eclipsing all of it.