Not much advancement tonight. I did a little co-op, but nothing fruitful because the other players either entered boss zones outside of the summonable area, or in one case, the guy had us clear a room for him before banishing us back to our worlds.
While it took freaking forever to finally start having the co-op element kick in for this game, I will give it props for having more cordial invaders. Outside of one jackass I encountered early in the game, most of the invaders I've encountered are just guys in it for some fun PVP and tend to seek you out, greet you from a distance and then go for the kill, and while I lose nine out of ten times, I'll take this friendly invasion over the BS in DS1 where invaders made certain zones a virtual nightmare for me cause the guys basically hid around the level to snipe me or sneak attack while I was trying to complete it. I think I would have loved Sen's Fortress and the Painted World more if I didn't have to worry about using Humanity cause it meant I would be invaded all the freaking time in those places. I think helping things out is the Red Soapstone which allows invaders to ask you if you want to be invaded.
This sort of brings me back to the one thought I felt about the PVP elements of this series, which is that they have it backwards. Instead of making invaders only show up in locations where the other player hasn't beaten the boss. It would make more sense to me to have the invaders only be able to invade worlds where the bosses have already been beaten. Partly cause it's frustrating to try to finish an area and prep for the boss only to have to change your plans cause some jackass showed up to ruin your day; and partly because it would actually make backtracking to older areas more exciting. I mean traveling through the Forest of Giants with my over-leveled character to grab some item I missed is kind of tedious, but would be exciting if I knew there was a chance the zone would be filled with invaders. It would make backtracking more interesting since you could still have a real challenge. DS2 certainly mixes this up since it introduces the Red Soapstone and bonfire ascetics, but I feel the PVP community would prefer this set-up since it would mean the chance to invade more players, have a much better diversity of zones to play in, and would mean they are going to be challenging an opponent who has already proven they can beat the area as opposed to maybe running into a less skilled player. Griefers may hate this set-up, but I kind of like the idea.
Onto actual news, I spent most of the evening playing around with covenants. I'm having bad luck with the Heirs of Sun covenant cause I'm either only able to be summoned in endgame zones, my host dies, or I keep getting sent away before boss battles for one reason or another; not to mention my own success rate with some bosses isn't perfect. So, I picked up the Sentinels of Blue or whatever and finally learned the missing gesture I needed for the gesture trophy, and then realized I still hadn't opened that stupid hidden door in the Black Gulch. Did that, and met the old man a third time and joined the Pilgrims of the Dark, and gained access to the side quest to unlock one of the other hidden bosses of the game. I also explored the Dragon Shrine some more and debated about fighting the dragon there and found the petrified egg needed to join the dragon covenant.
Also, is there anyway to unfreeze all the frozen treasures in the Ivory Crown DLC? I still haven't fought the first boss, but I tried pyromancy and that did nothing. I need to get back to finishing it up I guess. I did find the item that makes the invisible knights visible, so that was nice.