<- Previous update: Fuck You, Goliath II
Recap:
- Slayed the Bell Gargoyles
- Rung the first Bell of Awakening
Current missions:
- Tie up some loose ends
- Prepare to fight the Capra Demon
So, I
finally rung the first Bell of Awakening. Pretty exciting--but there's still one more left.
As I puzzled over its wherabouts, I swung around my new Gargoyle Tail Axe, relatively unimpressed with it. It's kind of unwieldy, and I don't really care much for its overall design; it just looks kinda silly to me. I don't see myself using it very often, if at all.
Anyway, I figured the most obvious step for me to take next would be to slay the Capra Demon. As I mentioned in
this post, I've already had an encounter with him. It was during a prior session that I never talked about due to pacing/length concerns.
I love his design--he's an imposing, muscle-bound humanoid demon wearing a goat skull, representing Capricorn. He wields two giant blades, and during battle, is assisted by a couple of undead attack dogs. He's probably my favorite boss so far, strictly design-wise.
Like pretty much every other boss I've faced so far, he's very strong, but his movements are comparatively slow, so defeating him is a simple matter of avoiding his attacks and punishing them accordingly. He should've been an easy kill when I first met him, but what made him all the tougher for me to handle were his stupid fucking guard dogs. If I got them out of the way first, taking out Capra himself should be a cinch.
Before that, however, there were a number of things I felt obliged to take care of first.
Keeping in mind what Flee said about tails, I decided to try my luck once again at fighting that big blue headless demon down in the old church--this time, focusing all my attacks on its giant tail. Although I couldn't manage to sever it like I could with the gargoyle, I noticed that if I just wailed on him from behind, never allowing him to face me, he couldn't do jackshit about it--so I continued until it died. It gave me a thousand souls, and a piece of Demon Titanite.
Turns out those things are called Titanite Demons, which gives me the idea that there's gonna a lot more of them.
From there, I thought abut returning to Firelink Shrine, so I did. There's an elevator that leads down to it in the monastery. I met up with Griggs and Lautrec, the two guys I rescued from their respective prisons. Lautrec gave me the reward he promised--a Sun Medallion. That's the same thing I got from Solaire--what the hell are they for?
Griggs was more interesting. As I expected, he teaches you the ways of sorcery. The way magic works in this game is pretty unique--each spell or miracle is treated as its own item that you can purchase, and each one has a set number of uses. In order to utilize the magic, though, you still have to meet the requirement parameters, as you would for any other weapon. The spells Griggs offered were quite basic--mostly Soul Arrows of varying degrees, but what caught my eye the most was the Magic Weapon spell, which allows you to imbue your weapon with magic. That's intriguing, but I wasn't prepared to sink 3000 souls on it. I'll come back for it later.
For sentimentality's sake, I
attempted to revisit the cemetery again--but as soon as I crossed under the inner stone archway, I heard this... very unsettling growling and snarling noise. It was even given subtitles. It kinda sounded female, too, but I dunno. Bracing myself, I circled the entire shrine in search of the noise, but I just couldn't find anything. When I returned to the same area (twice), the snarling stopped. I never found out where it came from.
I spoke with one of the first NPCs you meet in the game. I don't know his name, but he's blonde, and when you first meet him, he basically tells you to fuck off. This was before I knew to exhaust every bit of each NPC's dialogue, so this time, I made sure to do that. He explained that he meant no ill will by telling me to fuck off, and bestowed upon me a copper coin. Yay, more useless shit to clog up my inventory.
Speaking with him again, he offered me to join his covenant--the Way of White. That sounds pretty KKK-esque, but nonetheless, I joined. I have absolutely no idea what this entails, so if someone could explain covenants to me, that would be great. Anyway, he sold magic scrolls as well--and his were a bit more interesting. He teaches healing spells, and a spell called Homeward, which basically acts as a Homeward Bone--that's amazing, but it's 8K souls, so I may as well just continue buying them from my usual merchant.
I was pretty much done here, so I figured I'd start training for the Capra Demon now.
I looked through the entire weapons section of my inventory. I haven't even
tried 90% of these weapons--yet here they all are. So, I thought to myself, why don't I just test all of them out? There's gotta be something that'll help me kill those dogs here
somewhere...
The plan was this: I'll train in an area like the Undead Burg, where all the enemies are weak, and good for testing new weapons on. For each weapon I haven't used before, I'll kill every enemy in the immediate area with it--taking note of all their traits, caveats, and idiosyncrasies. I'm looking for a weapon that can take care of small ankle-biters, so I'll pay particular attention to those.
Through this process, I gained an interest in the following weapons:
Bandit's Knife - I found this in lower Undead Burg. I could've bought a simple Dagger from the merchant, but I'm banking that this one is slightly stronger. As one would expect, its standard attacks have low damage and range--but its backstabs and parry ripostes are lethal, so it could honestly be a huge asset down the line. I'll be feeding this thing some Titanite, for sure.
Longsword - I've been neglecting this thing, but its all-purpose nature is hard to dismiss. I'm currently torn between this and the Morning Star as secondary weapons. I'll keep this upgraded, as well.
Mail Breaker - Since there aren't any heavily-armored enemies around the Undead Burg, I couldn't test out this weapon's "mail-breaking" properties. Otherwise, it's pretty weak. I'll have to remember to test it out on some balder knights later on, because if it's
that strong against armor, that could be extraordinarily useful.
Unfortunately, I'm still not strong enough to wield the Zweihander--even when I two-hand it--so I couldn't test it.
During this session, I kept trying to find that item Big Boss keeps pestering me about, but no luck. There's one area in the Burg that I've yet to explore: In the tower that leads up to the Taurus Demon's bridge, there is a locked door at the very bottom as soon as you enter. I don't have the key for it, but I'm certain that the item is behind it. I have absolutely no clue where else it could be--I've looked everywhere, and I've struck pretty much every wall I could see, so it couldn't be anywhere else.
When I was all finished, I looked at the number of souls I gained, and--...Holy shit. I had 16K.
If I just spent a little bit more time killing shit, I could have enough to buy the Crest of Artorias. So I did.
Buying that crest felt like a huge load off my shoulders. Finally, I would get to see what's beyond that door in the forest. Hopefully, it's not anything
too fearsome--thank God I found that secret bonfire just in case, though. Either way, I just hope it was worth the 20,000 souls.
AND THEN IT WASN'TWhat ended up being behind that damn door was another part of the forest--except with stronger enemies. The first thing I spotted was a lone figure off in the foggy distance, standing firm between a loose set of trees. I walked towards him to gather if he was friend or foe. As soon as I was noticed, he shot a soul arrow at me. They're quite easy to evade when you can see them coming.
Well, foe it is. I advanced towards him, remaining wary of the unfamiliar surroundings. Just then, I spot the ghostly image of a knight charging towards me. His body was barely visible, and I couldn't lock on to him--and after a vain attempt at slashing it, he countered, taking away a massive chunk of my life. What the fuck is even going on.
After getting up, I started booking it. I sprinted all over--I didn't care where I ended up. I just wanted something to take away from this. An item, a weapon--
something--because I know I didn't just waste 20,000 souls on an area I can't even survive in.
I got face-to-face with the hostile sorcerer, and to my surprise, he
appeared to be human. In fact, I think he
was human. Now, I could be completely wrong about this, but I feel as though the only reason he was attacking me was because I happened to be hollowed at the time. I had some humanity bottled up, but I was kinda saving it--but maybe if I come back to this area as a human, they won't attack me. That's on my to-do list for later. Hopefully that won't be a complete waste of time, too.
Anyway, I did end up finding something before I fled with a Homeward Bone: a set of Eastern Armor. Looks really cool, and appears to be strong, but I need to increase my endurance more before I can wear it.
One last thing, too--remember that area with the stone knights? I crept back up there again, for funsies. This time, I walked as slowly as possible, so as to not awaken any of the knights--and I ended up finding myself a new spear. It's called a Partizan, and it's a lot longer than my Winged Spear--but eh, length isn't everything. If it's
too long, I'm just going to be bouncing it off of walls and shit, so... meh. A decent find, though, regardless.
It was time to fight the Capra Demon. Now, I'm still having some sync issues with my elgato, so once again, I'm gonna have to forgo the video idea again. I'm sad about that, because this would've been an entertaining one.
Capra's fighting area is very small--almost claustrophobic. To the right from the entrance is a building with a series of thin columns on its facade, with which you can ensnare self inadvertently. Not a good spot to be in. To the left is a staircase, from which plunging attacks are possible. That's where I wanted to be, but unfortunately, the undead attack dogs control the pace of the battle, because they have to be killed right away. Otherwise, you'll just get ganged up on.
The Winged Spear has weird properties. If you strike at the right moment of your opponent's attack, it'll do extra damage. This means I have a chance to one-shot the first attack dog from the word "go," but that requires me to stand my ground at the entrance--which is dangerous, of course, because the Capra Demon attacks you
immediately upon crossing the foggy gate. It's still the best option.
Failing to kill the attack dog in one hit puts you in a bad position, because Capra will have immediately cornered you. The timing of my rolls are crucial here, because all of his attacks do massive damage and have wide hitboxes--
especially his unblockable jumping attack, which gave me a lot of grief. He likes to use this move after knocking you down, so that when you get up, you literally cannot escape--you're just dead.
When I got up on the staircase to plunge into his skull, it only did the same amount of damage that a strong attack would have--so from there, I instead focused on keeping my distance, and striking only when necessary. If the second dog hasn't already been taken care of at this point, you're already dead.
It's imperative that you don't let him corner you, because rolling out of the way only becomes more sketchy. The jump attack is he strongest technique I have, and it's ideal for punishing a lot of his moves.
With just one last chunk of health left, Capra attempts his unblockable strike one last time--completely out of my reach. In his vulnerable state, I finish him off with a jump strike, killing him after my fourth attempt. I needed almost all 10 of my Estus for that fight.
He dropped a key to a place called the Depths--I suppose that's where I'm headed next.
Dark Souls Impressions - The FINAL Update