Welcome back to Lordran my friends, and to the adventures of the undead warrior Andromeda! In this series, I have been explaining some memorable moments from my on-going first playthrough of Dark Souls. The last time we saw Andromeda, she had risen to the mountain-top kingdom of Anor Londo, discovered the hidden magic of the Painted World of Ariamis, and ultimately defeated the bosses Ornstein and Smough. Anor Londo was an unforgettable dungeon crawl, but the boss battle hit Andromeda like a sack of bricks, and only with the advice and encouragement of fellow Dark Souls players was she able to put together a strategy to victory. It wasn't just a victory for me, or Andromeda, but for all of us!
After Anor Londo, she was full of confidence, pride, and ready to dive into new challenges. In this entry of the Dark Souls Diary, we fall far from the sun-bathed mountain-tops, and slink down into the darkest depths of the world: the Demon Ruins, Lost Izalith, and New Londo Ruins. Not only does the adventure continue to be difficult, but it gets much scarier!
Demon Ruins
This area is below Firelink Shrine, even deeper than Blighttown. It's a place of lava and chaos, far away from anything that's good, green, and undead in the world. When I walked into this place the first thing I noticed is that there are people lying on the floor that crawl towards you and have poisonous worms on their backs that attack you. So, I retreated and put on the Ring of Fog (makes you nearly invisible) so that I could sneak by all of them when I went back. Now, compared to the rest of the enemies in the ruins, those crawling parasite men are a minor nuisance. Just down the path from the entrance, I came across a giant boss called the Ceaseless Discharge. In order to get a laugh from you, I could go ahead and start calling him Relentless Vagina Juice but I'm going to keep it classy in this entry.
Ceaseless Discharge is a giant deformed humanoid demon, but when I first saw him I couldn't make out his silhouette, I simply saw a mountain that was trying to burn me to death with fire breath. When he appeared I ran for my life and I hid in a nearby path that allowed me to cower behind a large wall, safe from his attacks. After he attacked, I would come out from behind the wall and shoot him with a couple arrows before diving back into cover. Eventually he died and I moved onto the area below him, and it wasn't any prettier.
It was a valley full of Taurus Demons! I fought one of these guys as a boss battle early in the game, and now I'm in a valley packed with 10 of them! But what does our warrior Andromeda do when faced with overwhelming odds? She gets creative. I put on the Ring of Fog so they couldn't see me, and I started sniping them all from a distance, taking breaks to run away when they began searching angrily for the source of the incoming arrows. You may be wondering, why would so many Taurus Demons be sitting in an unremarkable valley, there's nothing here. Wrong, it turns out they were protecting a Large Fire Ember, which would allow me to upgrade my Fire Longsword +5 up to a +10. The Ember was in the middle of a lava field and I would surely die trying to grab it. I ended up deciding it was worth dying for and I rolled into the lava, grabbed the Ember right before I burned to death, and respawned at the bonfire happy that I had my new loot.
It's certifiably crazy, but the Ceaseless Discharge wasn't the only boss battle in the Demon Ruins. He was just one of three, with the other two being a Centipede Demon, and a Firesage Demon. The Firesage provided the most frustration and deaths. This boss is yet another variation of the same hammer-wielding boss I've fought twice before in the game. The first time being the Asylum Demon in the very first dungeon, and the much tougher Stray Demon you find when you revisit said dungeon. I've always had a ton of trouble with these hammer-wielding Demon varieties and the Firesage killed me about 15 times before I came out on top. With the death of this demon I was able to move on into Lost Izalith.
Lost Izalith
This is supposedly the place where Chaos was born in Lordran, and it's the source of all the demons. There don't seem to be many demons remaining here though, they must have all packed up and left to terrorize other places. Izalith is however full of the bottom halves of dragons, and I mean that literally. Sets of legs without a torso sit around the area and if you spook them they jump on you lol. The end boss, Bed of Chaos, is the real trouble here. This monster looks like it came right out of Pan's Labyrinth. The Bed's attacks aren't nearly as dangerous as the crumbling floor around it. I died numerous times just running around into holes in the floor. This is technically an easy boss battle and the Bed of Chaos only dies after one hit to the creature at the core of the structure, but the developers still found ways to kill you despite the simple task. Once I killed the Bed of Chaos I was more than happy to leave this place and never see any lava again. Little did I know, the next dungeon would be full of something worse than lava. Ghosts!
New Londo Ruins
This dungeon was a roller coaster ride. Up until the end it was an emotional and logistical nightmare, but the triumph of conquering it was so great that I felt like I won the Super Bowl. It was emotionally unnerving because ghosts in games or movies always scare me, and this place is full of floating, sickle-swinging, ethereal doom. When you come in range the ghosts suddenly appear and begin chasing you down. They can go through walls, up through floors, down through ceilings, and even straight out of the darkness of the water. There are a few ambush spots in New Londo Ruins where entering a certain room means you will be surrounded by ghosts. Also, you can't even do damage to the ghosts unless you have a cursed weapon capable of harming them, if you are Cursed (the worst thing ever, you don't want to be regardless of the purpose), or if you use the Transient Curse item which allows you to do damage to the ghosts for 5 minutes.
The ghosts were stressful, but this place was also a logistical nightmare because the majority of the time you are either on thin catwalks hanging just above black water, or outside of buildings on ledges that are easy to fall off. Having Transient Curse was the only way I could guarantee being able to kill the ghosts, but since they last 5 minutes you have to make sure you have enough, because you have no idea how long the dungeon will last and how slow your pace of progression will be. Also, be ready to have Transient Curse run out in the middle of a battle when you need it most!
After exploring the ruins I became familiar with the layout, where all the enemies are, and less inclined to be afraid. But the bosses at the end of the dungeon couldn't care less about my new found confidence. In the deepest part of New Londo, you come to a winding staircase that spirals downward until the path disappears into darkness. I walked off the edge of the staircase and fell into the Abyss where the Four Kings awaited me. The Abyss is incredibly disorienting because there's nothing at all, just blackness until the first King appears like a bat out of hell. The Kings were way bigger than I thought they would be. I assumed they would be big knights, not giant spiky monsters floating around in nothingness.
Last week I put out a blog asking for help and advice from other Dark Souls players because the Kings had beaten me into submission and I had no strategy. There was a time that I thought I would never beat them, and one time after I died I wished I could just pay a bunch of souls and bypass this horrible boss battle lol. But the Dark Souls community came through with amazing advice, and I pieced together a strategy to victory with help from all of you!
I took off my useless shield altogether and wielded my most powerful weapon with both hands, increasing damage output. I took a dose of Green Blossom so that my stamina would recharge faster, and I rushed into the first King attacking him once or twice before rolling through his melee attacks. When his grab attack or magic attack came around, I ran away to avoid it as much as possible. With this new strategy I was able to kill every King. The hardest part of the Four Kings battle was the moment right after I would kill a King. At that moment I was most vulnerable because a new King had always just showed up, and there was a great distance between us, allowing him to use devastating ranged attacks on me as I desperately sprinted towards him to close the gap. At first I was depressed because of how badly the battle was going for me and how many times I was dying, but with advice from you guys I was able to feel the elation of winning and moving onto new things. I feel so much better, and I don't want to see New Londo again for a long time.
Stay tuned for the next entry of the Dark Souls Diary, and the continuing adventures of the undead warrior Andromeda. Next time, we go to the Tomb of the Giants, and beyond!
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