Dark Souls Impressions - The FINAL Update

Nobody is stealing anything from you unless we're talking about disc locked content.

There's no difference. Being against disc-locked content doesn't make sense if you're not going to be against all DLC. It would've been regular-ass downloadable content anyway if it weren't locked to the disc, so what difference does it really make? It's all cancer, you can't pick and choose what you like.

Games are much more advanced these days, are you kidding me?

They're not, not in any impressive ways anymore. Knowing you, you only care about graphics or some shit. Graphics stopped being impressive a long time ago, and I'll go back to the 8-bit era for all I care about graphics. There's more to games than just that.

It cost me $1 but the regular price these days is $5, and when it was released it was $30. So pretty much half a game for the same rate. Seems fair to me. 8 missions, 4 new multiplayer maps, 2 new game modes and 9 new weapons.

Only if the missions are the only thing that has any value to you about the game, and nothing else. Which is foolish. That game isn't worth $60, maybe $25 at best. You were stolen from.

]Where are the publishers supposed to get money from if there's no money to be made from sales?

If they're a good publisher, they won't have to worry about that.

📸

Stupid, foolish, mental midget
Your IQ is double digit

It may be cheap but it's still a compete car.

>compete

📸

Also, no it isn't. It's a completely functioning car, but that doesn't mean anything. How much did you pay for it? Cars vary in terms of price, especially from dealer to dealer, and that's why they aren't comparable to video games. Because the market says they're all worth the same price (and therefore, have the same amount of value in content). Which is retarded.

You're really not missing out on anything, trust me.

I don't care. It could be the fucking shittiest and most disappointing DLC ever, and I won't care. I don't play games to have fun, I play them to experience art—and if some aspects of it are locked out, I'm not getting a complete picture of the painting, and I have every fucking right to be pissed off about it.

How would you like it if you visited the Louvre, but when you got to the Mona Lisa, you noticed they covered it up with a curtain. Your tour guide tells you that you aren't worthy to gaze upon this painting unless you pay an extra fee—you've already paid to visit this museum, and now you're being obliged to pay extra to see one more painting. Maybe not even the Mona Lisa—one entire section of the museum is sequestered off, and you only have access to it if you pay.

Would that be okay with you?

Plenty of people eat pizzas with all the toppings available. Try again.

No, they don't. Nobody. Maybe you do, because you're gross and fat or something, but no normal person does this.

If you don't like pineapple, you don't put it on your pizza. If it's on your pizza, you return it.

Then why the hell did you order all the toppings?

uhhhh

I didn't. Read that sentence again.

If you don't like a DLC, but you still have it because you bought the GOTY edition, you don't have to access it.

wtf? You paid for it anyways this doesn't make any sense.

It makes perfect sense, and I have no idea what you're even struggling with. What I'm saying isn't hard.

Nope, extra. It's an addition. An expansion. If a building is expanded, it doesn't mean it wasn't a complete building before, it simply has had an expansion.

That building wasn't completed before.

You can't add to something if it's already finished. That's what the fucking word means. If you honestly expect to change my mind on this, you never ever will, so you might as well give up the ghost now if you SERIOUSLY think that you can change the definition of words that brutally. I get accused of doing the same thing, but never to that extent.

It's an expansion added after the fact. How many times do I need to say this?

You can say it 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0000,000,000,000,000 more times, and it still won't make it a reality. I don't care if it's added after the fact. It's an unacceptable practice that should never be done.

No game is worth $60, so the fact that anyone should be expected to pay MORE than $60 for a complete game experience when most games aren't worth $30 is completely asinine, and what you're basically doing here is saying consumers should be relentlessly fucked for every nickle and dime they can swallow. And I'm supposed to agree with you. I'm supposed to love DLC and think it's this great thing.

You just did. You said "all the more reason to not fucking bother" when I said devs don't make a killing on DLC. So you admit they're not greedy.

Just because you don't make a lot of money doing something doesn't mean you can't be greedy. What kind of retarded shit is that?

So, again, why should all this stuff be free? Nobody owes you anything. They worked hard on the DLC, they deserved to be paid.

Nobody owes ME anything, not personally.

Every single player is owed the DLC, though, if they already paid full price for the game. It's not just about me.

In fact, I'll take the fall for my cause—all DLC should be free for EVERYONE except for me. I'll vow to pay for every DLC from this point on if it means that everyone can have it for free tomorrow. Now you can't play this retarded "you're so entitled" game, as if being entitled is at all a bad thing. It's GOOD to be entitled.

But no, they do deserve to be paid. For the base game. Which I did already.
 

>less content = better
😂

Yes. Less content = less money being extorted = objectively better. Yes.

Sorry I don't look at the past through rose tinted glasses. It sure was awesome that my cousin had more content in Sonic Adventure 2 because he had the GameCube version. Content I couldn't access because I had it on the Dreamcast and there was no DLC.

Whatever, that game is booboo buttcheeks anyway.

Then you're conflating the two. Paying for DLC isn't tipping. It's paying for the meal.

LMAO

No, paying for the base game is paying for the meal. DLC is like having to pay for refills.

That's ridiculous. In this modern age where you can find entire playthroughs of a game on YouTube. Come on man.

It's not the same, I have to play it for myself. It's not like a movie, where I can see a clip and see if it looks interesting to me. Games are interactive, and if I can't interact with it, then I don't really know what the game is like.

Most of my favorite games probably looked uninteresting as fuck to me when I first saw gameplay of them. It was only until I played it for myself that I realized how awesome they actually were.

You're right, I should just hack Microsoft and get the DLC for free. I shouldn't ever have to pay people for things they make and are selling.

Probably

Or just don't buy shitty DLC and shit like gun skins.

It's all shit. If you're saying I can judge it all without playing it myself, then I'm judging it by not playing it myself.

It's all shit, and you're all fucking stupid for buying into it.

If you look at any movement ever, extremists almost always end up failing.

They fail, but they succeed in spreading the meme. The game isn't to succeed, that would be a waste of life. There are better hills to die on.

Unless it's a shitty game you're getting $60 worth of content.

And 90% of games are shitty.

The 10% of games that aren't shitty don't have $60 worth of content, either. Maybe $50 tops.

Then there's the magic 0.001% of games that really are worth $60, or above and beyond that.

You can't base the industry on outliers like this.

I have played a ton of games worth that much where I get hundreds of hours of enjoyment.

That's because you're not a discerning consumer, and you're not interested in games as an art form. You're just in it to have fun. You're the consumer that the industry wants.

My main point has always been that DLC in and of itself is not a bad thing.

If it were all free, I'd agree with you.

You can know. Just look up gameplay and ask people.

Do you really think I can trust anyone's fucking shit-ass opinions on fucking anything? You serious?

You get full games. Acting like you're entitled to extra content the developers make after the game is finished, and that it should be free, is ridiculous.

I am entitled to extra content, because without it, I'm not getting a full game.

This is why I said don't bother to argue with me on this. I haven't budged an inch, and I'm only ever going to double down on this. I know I'm right, I know everyone else is wrong. Nothing will change. You're wasting your time and fucking up my thread.

In the time it would take to read this argument I could have written 8 pages of Gwyndolin smut.

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But fine, I'll drop it.

You're not getting the last word, though

Because disc locked content is a scam. Normal DLC isn't.

Yes it is, there's no difference.

Except you don't know me at all, I don't really care about graphics. I'm talking about how games play. How ARMA 3 for example has incredible real life shit in it.

Then you would know that games, especially in the triple A industry, haven't innovated shit for the past twelve years. Except for Nintendo.

It's foolish to care about more missions? Lmao did you hit your head? I bought it for a dollar. If anything I feel like I robbed them.

I don't care if you bought it for a dollar, you said it was $30 originally. That's theft.

Because good people just get money for free?😂👌

Yes

>comparing a typo to writing "most biggest"

English scholar status revoked

I probably typed "the most the envelope has ever been pushed," thought that sounded too awkward, rephrased it to "the biggest envelope pushers," but forgot to delete the "most." It happens, even to the biggest English scholars such as myself.

I bought MW2 on launch week for $10 less than everywhere else, so there goes another flimsy argument of yours.

No, there it doesn't go. You said "everywhere else," which implies it was $10 more everywhere else, which implies that you got some kind of deal. A deviation from the standard price, or who knows, they didn't realize it was supposed to be priced at $60. So nope.

Terrible analogy. You paid in advance knowing the Mona Lisa is in there, and then you come to find out it's blocked. Not at all like buying DLC 3 months after playing the game.

So ticket prices to museums should skyrocket the instant more exhibits are added, is what you're saying.

hahaha, tons of people do this. I personally think it's gross too but I'm not gonna sit here and deny facts of life because they'd make my argument look bad. That'd just be childish.

It's still not the norm, therefore it doesn't matter.

It still doesn't make sense. If the pineapple is DLC, and the game is pizza, where in this equation does returning the DLC come into play? And why does it matter?

It doesn't, because you can't return DLC. That's what I'm saying. Pizza and DLC are different things. You can return a pizza, you can't return DLC. Among one hundred trillion other differences that make it a stupid comparison.

Why would you be displeased with having all the DLC?

You wouldn't. I never said that. Everyone obviously would enjoy having access to all the DLC, but not everyone is going to enjoy all the DLC itself. So if you're not interested, you don't have to take advantage of it. That's why the comparison doesn't work.

With a GOTY edition, you have the option to access the DLC that you want, despite having all of it. With a pizza that has everything you don't want on it, the pizza is ruined. Shit comparison, never make comparisons again.

Buildings can be finished and then have something added to them afterwards. The original building was completed, then 10 years later they add an elevator. What are you not understanding about this?

The original building wasn't really completed if they added something ten years later. There's nothing I'm not understanding, this is basic logic.

In your opinion.

In the opinion of a discerning consumer.

So let me get this straight. I sell you a burger, you buy it and eat it. I then say that there are also fries for sale 5 minutes later, because the potatoes just arrived. Fries are sold separately either way and I couldn't have sold it to you with your burger because the guy that delivers potatoes was late. The potatoes cost me money, the oil I fry them in costs money, the man hours, the electricity, and so on. If I were to just give fries away I'd lose a lot of money. If I were stop offering fries completely, I'd lose business to my competitors.

A game isn't a burger, it's a meal. A meal comes with that burger, the fries, and a drink. If any of these things are missing, you just fucked me out of my money, because I paid for a meal.

DLC coming out months after the fact doesn't make a difference, it's just saying "we forgot your fries sorry" three months late, and saying I have to pay for it. Oops, we forgot that we're not morally supposed to add more shit to my bill after I've already paid for everything.

You, and anybody that thinks like you, are wrong. You are not entitled to anything. Nobody is.

Yes they are.
 

You clearly have no idea what extortion means.

I know exactly what it means, and DLC fits the definition quite perfectly.

Well you clearly lost the argument right here. You have no rebuttal, and you know I'm right. Whether you like the game or not doesn't refute my argument that DLC is a good way for developers to offer more content they might not be able to fit on the disc or that they just didn't have time to make or finalize. There is such a thing as having a deadline.

Except I didn't lose, I did give you a rebuttal, and I know you're wrong. I don't give a fuck about whatever plight the developers go through, at all whatsoever. I don't care. I care about the consumer only.

How is DLC a refill, when you never had the drink?

I paid for the drink. If I didn't get one, then you're agreeing with me. Thanks.

Well this is just bullshit. There's a reason gameplay videos and reviews exist and have so many views. It's because people can make up their minds (more or less) if the game is for them.

If you're a small brained consumer who doesn't care about art and only wants to be entertained. Much of the value of the best games ever can't be fully appreciated unless you experience them yourself. It's just a fact.

I will play any game, I don't care if I'm interested in it from a cursory glance. I want to play everything, but not if I have to pay an arm and a leg to get the full experience. And in this industry, I never will. Because of people like you, who think DLC is okay. It's not.

Yet you oppose piracy and modding.

Because modding is the active destruction of art, so obviously I'm going to fucking hate mods. More than DLC, in fact. At least DLC is official content. An artist pissing on his own art is a million times less offensive than consumers pissing on art. Fuck anyone who thinks they have control over anyone else's art.

And maybe I should start supporting piracy, but ONLY for games that have DLC.

If the game doesn't have DLC, it's not okay to pirate it. That game was made by someone with integrity.

Except that's factually untrue, because there is good DLC that adds hours of content and shitty microtransactions or $15 map packs.

Hours isn't enough. I want literal days worth of the HIGHEST quality content, or make a new game all together.

Thats's

📸

what succeed means, to spread the word and be viewed positively. If you just look like an angry entitled brat, you're not really gonna rally people to your cause and it's gonna be really easy to dismiss you. Like I'm doing right now.

Being an angry, entitled brat is the only proper state of being. You're living your life incorrectly.

Wow, how far up your ass did you have to reach to pull out these numbers?

Not far at all because Sturgeon's law is a commonly accepted truism.

"EVERYBODY IS AN IDIOT EXCEPT FOR ME"

Now you're getting it

You fucked up your own thread, and you have horrible arguments to support your point. Most anti DLC people just take this angle of microtransactions and a few bad practices by greedy publishers then paint the whole industry as evil. I was hoping your point of view would be a little more intelligent than this.

And it ended up being 10x more intelligent, sorry to disappoint you.

It really makes no difference to me whether or not you buy DLC, but you'll be missing out on a lot of good content.

This is what I'm saying. The fact that I'm PRESSURED into buying this stupid shit is part of the problem.

How can I be MISSING OUT on "good content" if I already have the complete game, according to you? That makes no fucking sense.

Struck down two more bosses—no points for guessing which ones. Boss video soon.

Hint: I'm not going to be fighting Gwyndolin, as I have no intention of betraying my covenant.

It's all a lie verbatim

Struck down two more bosses—no points for guessing which ones. Boss video soon.

Hint: I'm not going to be fighting Gwyndolin, as I have no intention of betraying my covenant.

It's all a lie verbatim

Regardless of whether the Blades are actually good or actually evil, it would be out of character at this point. Maybe during the Switch playthrough, I'll do things differently.

Hint: I'm not going to be fighting Gwyndolin, as I have no intention of betraying my covenant.

I'm fucking sure now you have a trap fettish you fucking faggot.

Hunt down the people who's only sin is rejecting the lies and seeking the truth, just like gamers.

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Neither are you. You've already lost this argument.

But I'm destroying you effortlessly?

The difference is one is locked on the disc and the other is legitimate extra content.

That's not a good enough difference. The location of the content shouldn't matter, and according to you, the game is still complete anyway and game developers deserve to extort consumers because they don't make enough money. You're a hypocrite.

Yes, the exact same Mario games over and over are really innovative. Physics in games haven't been improved at all. What a joke lmao.

Nintendo makes more than just Mario games.

Physics in games haven't been improved at all, no. Not in any significant way that makes my jaw drop, which is what I want. I want my jaw to fucking drop every time I play a new game. That's the standard. If I'm not floored at any point by what a game has to offer, it's basically a waste of time.

Except it isn't. It's exactly what you said, enough content to justify almost a whole new game sold for half the price of a new game. It's how ODST should've been priced.

It's actually the exact opposite of what I said, if you were paying attention. 8 new missions is an expansion on the same game, therefore not worth it. Enough content to justify a new game is not just fucking missions. It's literally a new engine, new physics, new characters, a new story, new graphics, new locations, new weapons, new multiplayer maps, all built from the ground up. That's a new game. That's what I want, and if DLC is anything less than that, you're being stolen from and the developers should be rounded up and shot for trying to sell it.

Or, you know, I meant everywhere else I had checked locally in my area. Or how Amazon also routinely sells games for cheaper than retailers. It's never $60 across the board. If you're legit still paying $60 for a new game, you're getting shafted.

So you know you're wrong and it wasn't the norm. It's $60 across the board. Exceptions never count.

This is a bad analogy because museums are generally cheap or even free, as "art belongs to the people". Games are art, too, but you don't just look at them hanging on a wall. It's something you play, it's a product.

I don't care if they're cheap, you often have to pay money regardless. DLC should be free—I don't care if it's a $0.01, it's extortion either way.

It's normal enough to be included in any conversation about pizza.

Nope. It's extremely abnormal. Not even worth bringing up.

In any case, maybe refunds should be added for DLC in the way Steam does it.

Not "maybe." Definitely.

The problem is that people can reap in-game benefits from DLC, though, so they could do that and then return it. It's almost like the entire concept is for fucking morons on every level.

This is your own personal opinion, though. Because there are plenty of people who enjoy all toppings.

Which is why the comparison DOESN'T WORK, because everyone would appreciate having access to all the DLC, even if they weren't interested in some parts of it. There are all these costumes you can buy your every character in Street Fighter V that I'm never going to buy, because wow what an extreme waste of money that would be. If I suddenly had access to all of them, I would be pretty fucking stoked—even though I only play as two or three characters out of the 30 character roster, so I wouldn't even be using most of those costumes. But I'd be happy that I'm still getting the content that I (and everyone else) is 100% entitled to.

So a building built before the advent of elevators isn't complete even though it's literally complete and construction is finished. Right.

Yes

But you're not really a consumer. You just want free shit.

No, I'm just someone who's hyperconscious of the amounts of money I'm spending, and I'm always making sure that I'm getting every penny of my money's worth whenever I buy absolutely anything, because wasting money is for fucking morons.

I never pay full-price for games, obviously, but if I did, I'd want $60 worth of content. But too bad, because it is a FACT, not an opinion, that 99% of games don't have $60 worth of content in them. $60 is a week's worth of food, so if I'm buying a piece of entertainment with that much, it better be one fucking brilliant game.

It never is. Maybe once or twice a year, I'll play a game like that. And even then, I always get it on sale anyway.

You realize a full meal costs more than just a single burger, right?

Yes, because I want the full game. I don't want just the single player experience (the burger). I want the multiplayer experience, too (the multiplayer). Then I want the DLC (fries) which shouldn't be DLC at all, but content that's just in the game.

There was a time when developers didn't cut content from their games and tell consumers that they designed it later, so that they aren't morally culpable for extortion. Thanks for being so gullible.

If a burger costs $1 fries and a drink would cost more. You don't just get fries and drink for the price of one burger.

What the fuck are you even babbling about now, this has nothing to do with anything that I'm saying.

Because I'm talking my plight as a 7 year old consumer seeing my cousin have more content than me in a game we both have, and me being unable to ever get the content unless I buy a GameCube and SA2B. DLC would've remedied the problem and been much cheaper. That highly benefits the consumer.

DLC would not have remedied the problem at all. How would it have? You're still not getting content that you want. You have to pay for it.

Do you enjoy wasting money on absolute bullshit? If so, why should anyone take your opinions on anything seriously? Why shouldn't I ignore you and care more about smart people who don't like wasting their money?

You didn't, though. $60 covers just the base game.

No, it covers what they TELL you is the base game. There is literally no reason to trust them—and even if there was, the game is guaranteed not worth $60 and they're duplicitous shitheads for trying to steal from you like that to begin with. They're all liars.

You're not entitled to try every game in existence if you can't afford to. That's just life.

Again, yes I am entitled, because everyone is entitled. I would take the fall for everyone else. If I were forced to pay 1000x for DLC for the rest of my life, and everyone else in the world got it for free, I'd take the fall for everyone else. That's how entitled I am.

Pirating games is trash, these people barely make that much money as it is.

Let me play the world's smallest violin for all the poor little game developers who could've made money doing anything else with their computer science degrees.

😿

No argument, you know I'm right.

It's the worst way to live. People who think society owes them something are the worst.

They're the only people who know what they deserve.

Butthurt law doesn't apply to everything, and you only accept it because you're under the impression everything sucks and developers owe you free games.

Everything does suck, and I don't want free games. I'll pay for everyone else's games so THEY can have free games.

A man who is never taken seriously.

I have no interest in being taken seriously by fucking idiots.

You've just been throwing a temper tantrum.

Smart people throw temper tantrums.

Because it's extra content that is good.

Not good enough to pay extra money for. Impossible.

<- Previous update: More Likely Than You Think

Recap:
- Killed the Demon Firesage
- Killed the Centipede Demon
- Made it to Lost Izalith

Current missions:
- Explore Lost Izalith
- Find and kill the Witch of Izalith
- Explore the Great Hollow


Hate to give you guys such a short update, but I honestly don't have a whole lot to say about Lost Izalith. It's basically just a dreary, oppressive lava place that requires you to wear that special ring just to navigate it. There's these really big enemies surrounding a shrine that I didn't fuck with too much—I only killed one, and the amount of souls I got wasn't really worth the trouble, so I didn't bother with the rest.

Then there's these fucking abominations:



I know tryphophobia is kind of a meme, but those things might actually be the worst things I've ever seen. I got trapped in a room full of them once, and the floor was poisonous—I picked up a lot of good items there, though.

One cool thing I picked up was a new pyromancy (finally) called Chaos Fire Whip—and at first, I'm super hyped for it, because it has 80 uses and it sounds like some crazy Castlevania-like shit. The spell is actually a lot lamer than it sounds, but it's... still situationally powerful, I guess. It's better than pretty much every other pyromancy I have, sans Power Within, so it doesn't matter that it costs two attunement slots. The lamest thing about it is that by 80 uses, it actually means 3 uses. Every spurt of the whip takes about 30 points away, so it's actually quite misleading.

I found a room full of these little bug-like creatures with... masks? They look like they're wearing masks. I killed one of them on impulse, but after noticing that they're completely harmless (or at least, passive towards me), I didn't kill any more of them. I never learned what their deal was, but they were trying to get through some door.

Later, I found Solaire, except he was wearing a funny mask and was clearly delirious. He attacked me on sight, and I had no choice but to kill him. I don't feel bad about killing shitty meme characters, but I'm curious to know what I was supposed to do to save him, because it wasn't at all apparent to me what I was supposed to do to not have him go crazy.

That was pretty much the last noteworthy thing that happened. There may well be a lot more stuff to do here, and I just missed huge chunks of it, but the area isn't particularly fun to navigate, and at this point, I'm pretty much ready to just beat the game at this point. I'm kinda done thoroughly exploring areas for the time being, unless it's a particularly interesting one (like the Great Hollow, which I'll be delving into next).

It wasn't long before I found the boss.

YouTube

As for progress, I'm way farther than you think I am—remember how I said I had two bosses down? I left out the other. At first, I had intended to post another double boss video, but because I managed to beat the other on my first try and had virtually nothing to say about it, I decided to just omit it. Maybe I'll include it in the next video instead as a throwaway, if only to make the next update a little longer.

I'm not a fan of having a platforming-esque boss in a game that has shitty platforming mechanics like taking leaps and trying to navigate janky ass slopes. I have no idea what triggers the OHKO fire pillar attack but it's terrible. It can somehow hit you on the slide or under the tree, too.

Just a boring uninteresting fight tbh, there's no sigh of relief after like some of the harder fights. Shit's just mad irritating. Also you keep referring to the bed as him.

Just a boring uninteresting fight tbh, there's no sigh of relief after like some of the harder fights. Shit's just mad irritating. Also you keep referring to the bed as him.

the only other visually reasonable option is "it"

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what's this about jumping? it's not necessary at all to jump at any point during the fight

urgency is overrated, i don't need every boss fight to feel the same or present the same challenges

i found it refreshing, and i'd honestly put it in my top 5 boss fights, don't @ me

okay, there's that one time you have to jump when the floor breaks all around you after breaking the first thing

but falling into it and dying like i did is almost better, because it gets you out of that situation, and the orb stays broken

unless you just really want that deathless run, i guess—it's an easy jump if you're prepared for it, and you never really have to jump again as far as i remember

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Also, that ramp you ran up with the illusory walls, was it the one inside the giant tree? It's worth searching around there.

Its about as enjoyable as clawing your own eyes out

heavy risk
But the priiize

soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo...

what "prize" were you referring to here, exactly?

Also, that ramp you ran up with the illusory walls, was it the one inside the giant tree? It's worth searching around there.

Its about as enjoyable as clawing your own eyes out

heavy risk
But the priiize

soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo...

what "prize" were you referring to here, exactly?

I honestly can't remember what that's referring to.

Also, that ramp you ran up with the illusory walls, was it the one inside the giant tree? It's worth searching around there.

Its about as enjoyable as clawing your own eyes out

heavy risk
But the priiize

soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo...

what "prize" were you referring to here, exactly?

If its the Tree of Ash then at the bottom is an endless lake with 2 hydras.....really pretty area actually.

Forget the items down there. But at the very end of the path you follow you find a huge dead dragon, you can pray to it and join a covenant.

If its the Tree of Ash then at the bottom is an endless lake with 2 hydras.....really pretty area actually.

Forget the items down there. But at the very end of the path you follow you find a huge dead dragon, you can pray to it and join a covenant.

i only asked because i already did all this

i was just a little massively disappointed, because i had a seed planted in my head for two years that i'd find something really cool here, and of course, i didn't

If its the Tree of Ash then at the bottom is an endless lake with 2 hydras.....really pretty area actually.

Forget the items down there. But at the very end of the path you follow you find a huge dead dragon, you can pray to it and join a covenant.

i only asked because i already did all this

i was just a little massively disappointed, because i had a seed planted in my head for two years that i'd find something really cool here, and of course, i didn't

🐉 best covenant

Just a boring uninteresting fight tbh, there's no sigh of relief after like some of the harder fights. Shit's just mad irritating. Also you keep referring to the bed as him.

the only other visually reasonable option is "it"

I think you touched on it when you were talking about the Lord soul.

since i'll be closing this playthrough relatively soon, and because it's been such a long journey, i've been thinking of sending it off in a big way

maybe start a new file where i fight all the unrecorded bosses (Asylum, Tauros, Gargoyles, Capra) as SL1 depraved, or maybe taking no hits or something, all in one big final video, if only to make up for the fact that i'm not buying the DLC

maybe make that my third AMA video too, idk

something like that, i think that would be fun

<- Previous update: Bed Witch

Recap:
- Killed the Bed of Chaos
- Collected the last Lord Soul
- Opened up the Kiln of the First Flame

Current missions:
- Explore the Great Hollow
- Find the Painted World
- Beat the game


The Great Hollow + Ash Lake

Knowing there's still much for me to do, I cut my excursion into the Kiln of the First Flame short for some endgame errand running. There's a couple of areas I still need to explore—including the Great Hollow—plus a couple of unchecked areas on my list: Ash Lake and the Painted World.

The last time I explored the Great Hollow was in Update #17, just over two years ago. I did not have the best of experiences there, so I never bothered to unearth whatever it was hiding from me—so I supposed it was high time for me to get it over with.

On the way back, I met Seigmeyer in the Poison Swamp, who gave me a Piercing Shield in exchange for some purple moss. He's the only meme character I feel any sort of attachment towards, so I'm glad he's still okay.

Once I made it to the Hollow, I was instantly reminded of why I wasn't a big fan of this place—falling down a series of branches with awful, awful collision detection and horrible invisible wall placement. It has a neat atmosphere, I guess, and those creepy basilisk things are definitely fun enemies (so long as you don't let them curse you), but navigating this place is an absolute nightmare.

Eventually, I made it back to those little mushroom fucks that make cute loon noises when you kill them—as well as the big mushroom fucks that bullied the shit out of me two years ago. I'm a lot stronger now, though, and they move just slow enough for me to make perfect use of my Chaos Fire Whip. They still pack a wallop if I get careless, though.

These guys were the reason I decided to put this place off—but, as it turns out, I had absolutely no reason to even fight them to begin with, because the next room brings me to a brand new area: Ash Lake, and there's a bonfire waiting for me just behind the busted log I emerged from. Looking around me, this is a pretty beautiful place—in fact, it's the same beautiful place I was admiring just before the Gravelord Nito fight, the place Chronic was telling me about.

Further out, I see an enormous yet familiar creature—a hydra, just like the one I fought in Darkroot Basin. I wonder if this one is stronger? Whether or not it was, I never found out, because I was able to slay it pretty easily regardless. I was half-considering posting a video for this thing, just like I did for the first one, but I honestly don't even think it's necessary at this point.

I didn't anything interesting from fighting it, either. Here and there, I was able to pick up random Dragon Scales, materials for upgrading weapons I'll never use.

Curiously, unlike most areas in the game, there was actually music playing. Pretty good music, too—the kind that makes me excited to see what's coming up next. Tension built as I followed the long, winding path of ash to wherever it would lead me. Scant few enemies were strewn about the map—easy-as-fuck clams that were a great source of Twinkling, and a (relatively) small hollow with a big mushroom and a couple basilisks, nothing too crazy or difficult.

The path eventually lead me to a dark, forested area—in the distance, I saw a bonfire, and a large, foreboding figure—as I approached it, I wasn't sure what to think of it. It couldn't be a boss, so what the hell is this?

After approaching the figure, I discovered it was an everlasting dragon, only he's WAY smaller than he should be. I have a weapon called a Dragon Tooth—a literal tooth from an everlasting dragon—and it's bigger than my fucking body. So why is fucking Charizard over here so small?

In any case, upon interacting with him, I was met with only ONE menu option:

"Join covenant."

YouTube

I came all this way, after ALL that build-up—I even put this entire area off for two full years—JUST to have the option to join some crummy-ass covenant. Please fuck my nose with a fucking snowmobile.

As you could imagine, I have absolutely no desire to abandon my favorite covenant to join some other random one that I'm not even given any details about. He doesn't even say anything to me, he just sits there. I almost attacked him, and I still kinda want to.

For the next thirty minutes, I desperately scoured the rest of Ash Lake for fucking anything of value that I could take with me, and the most valuable thing I found was a magic spell that I'll never be able to use, and wouldn't want to anyway. Ultimately, there's fuck all to do here. This entire diversion has been a complete waste of time.

The three things I've been secretly searching for for the longest time—the Armor of Thorns, the ninja flip ring, and, of course, the Peculiar Doll—I've visited every single one of the game's locations at this point, and I still haven't found any of those things.


Return to the Undead Asylum

I gathered my first couple leads about the Painted World in Update #19, where I saw the Peculiar Doll's description on a loading screen for the first time, identified it as the object I need to pass through the mysterious painting in Anor Londo, and determined that would bring me to this "Painted World" I've heard whispers about so often.

Turkey then gave me a hint as to where this doll would be, but promised it would be small enough that I wouldn't be able to suss out its exact location. In the end, that wound up being only half-true—his hint, paraphrased, is that I would need to revisit an area I haven't visited in a long time.

Obviously, he's implying that I can go back to the first area of the game, the Undead Asylum.

Technically, I still don't know how that works. The one who brought me away from the Asylum in the first place was the giant crow, who's always been perched there, but every time I try to interact with it in any way, it doesn't respond to me at all. I've contemplated attacking it a couple times, but something tells me that wouldn't get me anywhere either. I've tried all sorts of different and silly things—I even tried using the Beckon motion—but nothing ever worked.

And then I looked up.

There it was. I noticed a very large nest sitting up near the top of the shrine, one that obviously belonged to the crow, and looking further around it, there were distinct points in the shrine that made it distinct to me that I should be able to reach the nest. Either something important must be inside of it that allows me to interact with the bird, or I have to fuck with it somehow in order to get her to fly me back to the Asylum again. Either way, I was gonna find out.

I figured the easiest way to climb up the shrine would be to use the Undead Parish elevator—I always noticed the platforms you could jump to while ascending, but never bothered to actually see what would happen if I did. In doing so, I found myself climbing in places I didn't know were possible to climb before, and collecting items I never could've seen before. It's a weird feeling, knowing I always had the ability to do so.

One item I picked up was a key for the Undead Asylum, which confirmed in my mind that I was on the right track.

I eventually climbed my way up to the crow's nest, found two eggs, and nothing else. The game only gives me the option to curl up into a ball and pretend I'm an egg, too. Doing so does absolutely nothing, so I figured I had to stay put for a few seconds, kinda like the secret coffin passage in the Catacombs.

That did the trick.

From here, I'll cut to the chase—I killed the Stray Demon on my first try, and found the Peculiar Doll shortly thereafter.

Because the Stray caught me by surprise, the first 10-15 seconds of the fight were cut off. In essence, it's just a rehash of the Demon Firesage fight, which in itself was a rehash of the Asylum Demon fight. As such, I'm not going to bother recording commentary for this one, because I have absolutely nothing more to say about these things. I've fought so many of them at this point, it's a good thing I didn't die against him, because then, I'd pretty much have to rescind my Dark Souls license forever, because it's basically just a regular enemy now.

Don't feel like you have to watch this, or anything—I'm only posting it as a formality at this point.

YouTube

The Painted World of Ariamis

First and foremost, I just wanted to say SUCK MY DICK to whoever said I would never find this place on my own.

Second... Guys, you're killing me. This area was pretty goddamn underwhelming, too.

I mean, it definitely wasn't as much of a waste of time as Ash Lake was—but once again, I've found myself in an area where there's not really a whole lot for me to do. I found some cool pyromancies, but I can only be so excited about that, given that this is the endgame, and all my opportunities to use them have already expired at this point. In particular, Fire Surge is almost exactly what I wanted Chaos Fire Whip to be, and it even only takes up one attunement slot. The other one is a spell that corrodes weapons, which is neat and all, but again, I have no use for it at this point.

The rest of the area is a pretty barren, snowy-ass place filled to the brim with pathetically weak hollows, some of which have giant, creepy, and gross heads that spew HIV when you stab them. Most of the items you collect will be souls—boring consumable souls that I just don't need anymore. I'm getting the impression that this area would've been a lot cooler to find WAY earlier in the game, and not the very last one. But, you know, oh well, I guess?

I was just expecting something REALLY special, because... I don't know. The way people talk about this area, like it's this super cool place, made me think it was different from the rest of the game, or that it was special. But it's not, really. It's just another area, and a particularly boring and unmemorable one at that.

There's a big poison dragon thing, like the one I fought before in the Valley of Drakes, but I decided to just cheese with arrows, because fuck it. He only gives you a Dragon Scale anyway, so who gives a fuck. Down the bridge he was guarding, I found an equally large beast-looking creature—I don't know if it's another poison dragon, or what, but it wasn't moving and it wasn't acting hostile towards me, so I didn't really want to just attack it. I gave it one stab, just to see what it would do, because it's blocking my path, and I didn't know what else to do. I don't even know what this thing IS. I can't tell where it begins and ends. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen, but after awhile, I just left it alone.

Later, I had to go down to the sewers. With my trusty Hidden Body spell, those bonewheel cunts weren't able to detect me at all (and neither could anything else, for that matter), so I was able to clear that section of the area pretty well. I imagine this spot gave a lot of people all kinds of trouble, but fortunately, my willingness to use weird spells and shi paid off for me once again.

The switch I activated down there caused a statue above ground to turn a new direction—now, it's facing a door that was previously locked, opening it and revealing a fog gate. I guess it's boss time?

The individual described on the Peculiar Doll's lore piece is who I gathered to be Crossbreed Priscilla, the only name left on my hitlist that isn't Gwyn or Gwyndolin. She's the one I'll be meeting after I cross that gate.

And, lo and behold—there she was. Upon seeing her, I couldn't help but notice that nohealth bar appeared, as would be typical for a boss—nonetheless, I raised my shield and walked up to her as slowly as possible, before I could confirm that she was, indeed, not hostile, and was willing to speak with me.



Now, if you understand why I refuse to fight Gwyndolin—or hell, if you know how I play video games at all—then it probably doesn't surprise you, that I never actually wound up fighting Priscilla, either.

Basically, she's not evil or anything. She simply tells you that you shouldn't be there, and politely asks you to leave.

So, uh, I did. I spoke to her twice before jumping off the plank home—no more than that, though, because I was scared of triggering the boss fight which I couldn't bring myself to commence.

I mean, maybe I just made the Painted World completely pointless for myself. But look, man—if a boss is going to be that nice to me, it doesn't exactly inspire me to just go and kill them, you know what I mean? She didn't do anything to me, so I feel like I have literally no reason to fight her. It just wouldn't feel right.

What exactly is her deal, anyway? You can answer that, I certainly don't mind. Who knows, maybe I should fight her.

My only idea is this—I found an Egg Vermifuge while exploring. That makes me think it could be possible to get infected by those big-headed poisonous hollows, and then Priscilla is there to cure you, or something. She starts off by saying that I'm not "one of them"—one of them meaning "crossbreed," I assume. So, if you're in no need of her services, she just sends you on your way. That's all I can really imagine.

Anyway—this has probably been the most boring fucking update ever. But don't worry, there's only one more after this. Then I'm officially done.

No, seriously. It's almost time. I can't really believe it either.

Asylum Demon
Bed of Chaos
Bell Gargoyles
Capra Demon
Ceaseless Discharge
Centipede Demon
Chaos Witch Quelaag
Crossbreed Priscilla (spared)
Dark Sun Gwyndolin (spared)
Demon Firesage
Dragon Slayer Ornstein & Executioner Smough
Four Kings
Gaping Dragon
Gravelord Nito
Gwyn, Lord of Cinder
Iron Golem
Moonlight Butterfly
Pinwheel
Seath the Scaleless
Sif, the Great Grey Wolf
Stray Demon
Taurus Demon

From that screencap, eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that I have the Ring of Favor & Protection equipped.

Oh yeah—that's how you know it's time.

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This user has been blacklisted from posting on the forums. Until the blacklist is lifted, all posts made by this user have been hidden and require a Sep7agon^® SecondClass Premium Membership to view.

Oh, during all of that stuff, I naturally decided to upgrade all my shit as much as I reasonably could, revisiting every blacksmith to do so—I won't be grinding for Chunks or Slabs, though.

There was something I noticed when revisiting the Undead Parish, though, that I thought was pretty cool—a new item appeared in the same spot on the altar where I found (and dimwittedly consumed) my first Firekeeper Soul. It was a bunch of Humanity, maybe 5 or 7, bunched up with a regular Pendant—the same Pendant that has no effect that you can take as your starting gift. I just found it here.

I don't know why, but I thought it was amusing.

Oh, during all of that stuff, I naturally decided to upgrade all my shit as much as I reasonably could, revisiting every blacksmith to do so—I won't be grinding for Chunks or Slabs, though.

There was something I noticed when revisiting the Undead Parish, though, that I thought was pretty cool—a new item appeared in the same spot on the altar where I found (and dimwittedly consumed) my first Firekeeper Soul. It was a bunch of Humanity, maybe 5 or 7, bunched up with a regular Pendant—the same Pendant that has no effect that you can take as your starting gift. I just found it here.

I don't know why, but I thought it was amusing.

OH FUCK