Dark Souls Impressions - The FINAL Update

You probably pissed off Alvina in the forest by refusing to join her covenant. Other than that, attacking any neutral NPC will generally net a sin.

Did you hit any NPC's? It generally counts as a sin, also if you aggro an NPC requesting absolution unaggros the NPC toward you.

Just a handy hint

FINALLY you got Havel's ring. I am pleased. Very pleased

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

I remember when I first beat Havel.

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

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

You probably pissed off Alvina in the forest by refusing to join her covenant. Other than that, attacking any neutral NPC will generally net a sin.

The cat? She never even asked me to join, though. Or even brought it up, for that matter. If that's because I killed her whole covenant, that would make sense and all, but it's not like I was given much of a choice.

I had a feeling that killing humans would have some sort of drawback, though. I was told it would be fine. 

Can you talk to NPCs without having enemies attack you, though?...

Did you hit any NPC's? It generally counts as a sin, also if you aggro an NPC requesting absolution unaggros the NPC toward you.

Just a handy hint

Never hit any NPC that didn't hit me first. And yeah, I know what absolution does--I just wasn't sure what I did in the first place. I guess the fact that I massacred the forest covenant for being a hostile bunch of assholes counts as some kind of moral transgression. Maybe they should've been more diplomatic.

Regarding hitting NPCs, though, I have a funny story that I might tell later.

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

Are you talking about the Great Hollow? When my friend spoiled the illusory wall for me, he didn't give a name--he just said that there was "a new area" behind the wall. I just now found it, so yeah, I'll be exploring it.

You probably pissed off Alvina in the forest by refusing to join her covenant. Other than that, attacking any neutral NPC will generally net a sin.

The cat? She never even asked me to join, though. Or even brought it up, for that matter. If that's because I killed her whole covenant, that would make sense and all, but it's not like I was given much of a choice.

I had a feeling that killing humans would have some sort of drawback, though. I was told it would be fine. 

Can you talk to NPCs without having enemies attack you, though?...

Killing humans is fine if they attack first; killing the forest hunters wouldn't have sinned you.

A common sin, which I think is what you're experiencing, is that the first question she asks requires an answer of 'yes'. If you go talk to her and she refuses to speak further, it's because you initially said "no". So absolve your sin, and then go talk to her and say "yes" to join her covenant. Pretty much always say yes to NPCs, except with (I think) one notable exception: Patches, whom you'll speak to later.

Killing humans is fine if they attack first; killing the forest hunters wouldn't have sinned you.

A common sin, which I think is what you're experiencing, is that the first question she asks requires an answer of 'yes'. If you go talk to her and she refuses to speak further, it's because you initially said "no". So absolve your sin, and then go talk to her and say "yes" to join her covenant. Pretty much always say yes to NPCs, except with (I think) one notable exception: Patches, whom you'll speak to later.

Well that's annoying as fuck. Like I said, she never even told me about the covenant, let alone ask me to join it--she just asked me something along the lines of whether I wanted to turn back. Of course I'd say no to that. I'm an adventurer.

There was one other time I had to say "no," though, and it kinda fucked me up. The game takes the specific phrasing of the question into account. When you first speak to Laurentius after rescuing him, he asks you something along the lines of, "I have some skills I could teach you. Would you mind if I did?"

And you have to say "no," because if you say yes, you're saying that you would mind. I instinctively said "yes" at first--and then I had to clarify that I meant "no." Just kinda silly.

Here's what she says:

Is it not so that thou art new.
Thou fared well to find me.
But cometh thee not for the grave of Sir Artorias?
My advice true, forget this!
The legend of Artorias art none but a fabrication.
… Traversing the dark? 'Tis but a fairy tale.
Have thine own respect, go not yonder knocking for nothing, I say!

She basically warns you not to head out, but I have literally zero reason to heed her advice. So I said "no."

More than likely, I'm gonna collect 20K souls, join her covenant, and discover that it's not even worth it.

Here was Flee's description of the covenant:

Forest Hunters - Covenant you've just encountered a few members of. It serves to protect the forest from anyone who might seek to harm it and automatically summons its members to stop trespassers. Rewards for ranking up are a few rings and upgrade materials.

Well, I do like rings and upgrade materials. Maybe I'll look into it.

Then again, if I join the covenant, the rest of the forest hunters are probably not going to fight me anymore, right? That means I won't be able to use it as a grinding spot anymore. Hmmmmm.

You won't be ranking up in that covenant since the Forest Hunters invade other players trespassing in the forest. If you were online and human, you'd likely be encountering invaders.

Some of her stuff is available just by joining, though. As far as I can recall, there's no downside to simply joining every covenant.

oh my god

oh my god

Yeah thats about as enjoyable as it gets tbh

The only reason I join the covenant is so I can traverse that area without fighting the ghost dudes

oh my god

Yeah thats about as enjoyable as it gets tbh

i wonder where this is covered in the lore

oh my god

Yeah thats about as enjoyable as it gets tbh

i wonder where this is covered in the lore

It does remain quite mysterious,  but getting to the bottom does have a very nice and very interesting view,  and the very end of the path holds a pretty cool secret.

Depends if youve already gotten there I dont know.

so yeah, needless to say, i got sidetracked once again--this time in the great hollow

but i really want to cover new londo in the next update as well, so expect the next post to be kinda long

i'll probably just end up breaking it in half, though

so yeah, needless to say, i got sidetracked once again--this time in the great hollow

but i really want to cover new londo in the next update as well, so expect the next post to be kinda long

i'll probably just end up breaking it in half, though

Keep it long

I like it long

Spoiler

no homo

which is better

1

2

not a perfect loop, but it's barely noticeable when down-sized

unfortunately, the red Power Within aura does not show up as well as i'd like it to

Second

yeah i went with the second one

So, now I have a legitimate reason to request absolution now, and I'm pretty salty about it.

more on that later

Haven't been playing a whole lot over the past couple days, sorry.

Pip has forbid me from completing New Londo Ruins until after I beat Anor Londo, so I thought I might as well explore what I can. If I'd have known there would be this many Transient Curses just lying around, I wouldn't have burned 10K souls on two of them from the moss lady.

Also scraped the surface of Sen's Fortress, the Great Hollow, and other things. Stay tuned.

Don't listen to Pip




Listen to me instead, don't go to New Londo yet

Don't listen to Pip




Listen to me instead, don't go to New Londo yet

He was dared to not complete it.

He did loophole that shit though and kept exploring. Sneaky.

To hold you guys over, here's a funny little story I've been meaning to share:

So last week, I decided it would be fun to have one of my friends come over and have him play Dark Souls. I gave him his own file, had him play offline, and didn't tell him anything about it. He was familiar with Dark Souls only because his roommates were playing Dark Souls III, so he had a passing knowledge of how the game worked. Generally speaking, though, he kind of has the classic dudebro taste in video games: Madden, CoD, Halo, Skyrim--that sort of thing. Beyond that, he's never actually played a "real" video game since we were little kids. So I knew this was gonna be good. Above all, I just kinda wanted to see how far he'd get before he had to fly home.

He names his character "Wak," and picks the Knight class. After going over the starting gifts, he immediately asks me which one I should pick--which puts me in an awkward position, because I don't really want to tell him anything, so I just said, "Uhh, I think the Master Key is a popular choice?" That's what he went with. In retrospect, I probably should've just told him to pick the Black Firebombs, but it doesn't matter.

Because I had him play offline, he was spared of all the autistic messages people would lay all over the Asylum. He made it through the tutorial without a hitch, though. He probably could've used his shield more, but he understood the mechanics just fine, and he commented that he liked how good it felt to just walk around.

To my surprise, he actually managed to escape from the asylum demon without dying once. He saw the door immediately. When I first played, I didn't read the message that tells you to run away, so I tried fighting it until I saw an open door. I honestly expected him to have the same reaction.

Once he received his Estus Flask from Oscar, he proceeded to kill him. No idea why--he just did. I started cracking up, and he was like, "What? Did you not do the same thing?" And I was like, "No!!"

Once he got his standard weapon, he took care of the asylum demon on his first try, making for a deathless tutorial. I was impressed. He didn't seem to retain any of the more advanced techniques that were explained to him, though--he never blocked, and all he really did was mash the weak attack and roll, but he still managed to pass through.

When he made it to Firelink Shrine, he spoke to the crestfallen warrior--and then immediately stabbed him. I said to him, laughing, "What the fuck, are you just gonna kill everybody?!" And he said, "No! That guy was just being a dick." Oh boy. If he thinks anyone's going to be polite to him in his game, he's in for a surprise.

With the crestfallen warrior aggro'd, my friend was having a lot of trouble fighting him off. He was way out of his league. He didn't know how to parry, and he kept getting parried. It must have been at least ten attempts later when he finally decided that he should just run away--Which sucks for him, because now he's gonna miss out on a whole lot of cool items in the shrine.

Climbing up that hill leading to the aqueduct, he kills all the undead and makes a beeline towards he Undead Burg. Once he made it to the opening in the duct, he turns around. The crestfallen warrior was still making a mad dash towards him. "What are you doing!? Just go in. You can't beat him."

He told me to shush, because he had an idea. Rolling my eyes, I observed his brilliant solution to his stupid situation.

He stood at the entrance of the aqueduct, waited for the guy to make his way up there, locked on to him, and--I shit you not--he gave him a kick, a technique I've never seen him use before, and the crestfallen warrior fell to his death. He just kicked him right off the ledge. It was fucking hysterical. I was almost in tears. After a strong, painful high-five, I had to ask him:

"How the fuck did you know to do that?"
"The tutorial told me."
"But you've never done it before??"
"I never needed until then!"

You had to be there. God, it was the funniest shit ever. After that, he made a victory walk towards the aqueduct--but I told him to turn his ass around and explore Firelink some more, because now he's free to explore. I didn't hold his hand the whole time, though--I just wanted to make sure that he gets into the habit of exploring.

The Undead Burg gave him a lot of trouble, but he eventually made it out just fine. The last thing he did was beat the Taurus Demon, which took him about five or six tries. Though he had the Master Key, he ended up squandering the Gold Pine Resin on a couple of spear-wielders.

You may imagine that he killed the undead merchant, because he's an even bigger asshole than the crestfallen warrior--but he didn't. I was disappointed, because I hear you're supposed to get a cool weapon out of it.

But yeah, that was definitely something else. He's back home now, so his adventures are gonna be on hold for awhile-if not forever. It was super fun while it lasted, though.

Hey Verb if you dont intend on going back to the Berg for anything serious....may I suggest you, to go kill that shitface merchant?

All right, this won't be a full update, but if I don't talk about the stuff I did before E3, I'm gonna forget all of it, so I should probably just get it all out now. It was an annoying series of events, and I wasn't enjoying myself, so I apologize if I don't have too many kind words for the following events.

I took Aria's advice--well, her suggestion, anyway. She pointed me in the direction of Quelaag's Domain and suggested that I wasn't as finished with that area as I thought I was. Okay, fine--I was heading back to Blighttown anyway, because as I mentioned earlier, one of my friends spoiled the location of the second illusory wall for me. I'll get into that fuckery later.

I make it to Quelaag's Domain, and I start banging on all the walls that I see--which is really tedious as fuck, and I'd really just prefer it if this game didn't have any illusory walls. I appreciate the sense of surprise that it gives you if you manage to find one, but when you're actively stabbing every single wall, it just becomes a chore. And yes, I know that if I were to play online, a bunch of lovely snowflakes would've given me hints, but that's all the more reason not to even have them. Honestly, why have illusory walls if people are just going to tell you where they all are? It's supposed to be a cryptic, mysterious thing--yet at the same time, they're bullshit. Whatever.

The last room I checked was the floor below the bell chamber that leads to Demon's Ruins. Lo and behold, there was an illusory wall in that area. After busting it down, it revealed a short hallway, in which I spotted two things: a bonfire(!), and one of those horrible-looking parasitic egg-bearing guys. He was in the way.

So what the fuck do you think I did with him. I'll give you three guesses.

Did I saunter up to him, shake his hand, and invite him over to my place for some tea? No. Did I offer him a spiffy little brochure to my kid's birthday party, then go on my merry way? No. Did I ask him if he's accepted Jesus Christ into his heart? NO.

I fucking stabbed the fucker. I mean, why the fuck wouldn't I? He's not the first enemy of this kind that I've seen before, and he looked no different from them, so of course I fucking attacked him. But nooo, APPARENTLY, I wasn't supposed to do that. He's actually friendly NPC, and if you hit him, he starts pissing and moaning about it. When you attack NPCs, they don't stop attacking you, unless you do this one thing.

I knew better than to just kill him, though. Even though I wanted to. Now that I know he's an NPC, he probably has some kind of importance. So, when I un-aggro him, I'll make sure to make peace with him.

The way you un-aggro NPCs is by requesting absolution. Only a pardoner can absolve you of your sins, and it costs a whopping 20K souls to be forgiven. I later learned that the price is actually based on your level--the higher your level, the more you have to pay. Pretty fucking stupid, if you ask me, but whatever. The nice thing about it, at least, is that you don't have to pay for every one of your sins. Like, earlier, I "sinned" because I offended that cat in the forest, so I expected to have to pay for both offenses, but nah--one payment absolves you of everything. That's nice.

So, after getting back, the egg-bearer wasn't pissed off anymore, and I could just talk to him.

The first thing he asked me was if I was "a new servant." By instinct, and by sheer pride, I said "no."

Mistake. Mistake. Mistake. If you tell him "no," he tells you to fuck off, and he blocks the path. Now I just wanna kill him even more, but I knew that would be stupid, so I didn't. Talking to him again yielded no results, so I decided to just peer into the room that he was guarding so adamantly. Apart from the bonfire, I spotted a large creature off to the side. I couldn't see it completely, but it was big, and it had large, spider-like legs.

Oh. Wait. Is this Quelaag's daughter, or something? Maybe her sister?

Well, this is awkward. I totally just killed Quelaag, so... Whatever it is, it's probably not gonna be happy about that. Nonetheless, I needed to have access to that bonfire, so I did everything I could to get that egg-bearer to let me through. Through this process, it suddenly became apparent who I was talking to: Eingyi.

Awhile back, I picked up this pyromancy spell called Poison Mist. Its description spoke of a famous pyromancer called Eingyi who used his skills to create toxin-based pyromancies. Apparently, this was considered a desecration of the art--you're not supposed to tamper with pyromancy in that way, and so Eingyi was banished. Some time later, he became an egg-bearer, subservient to a "deformed young girl who speaks an unintelligible tongue."

The egg-bearer blocking the way, the guy I stabbed--that was Eingyi, and the creature from within? That must have been the "deformed young girl." If I had just kept this spell's description in mind, I probably would've remembered that one of these egg-bearers was actually going to be an important pyromancer.

I discovered that the only way to convince Eingyi to let me through (besides brute force) was to quit the game and have him ask me if I'm a servant again--and this time, say "yes." Begrudgingly. I'm nobody's servant, but then again, nobody ever said that I have to tell the truth in this game. Maybe I'm still in Fallout 3 mode from my last playthrough, but I'm still kinda squeamish about outright lying to people. Whatever, though--my cause is greater than his. Probably.

I was indeed correct, though--not only was the monster inside clearly a deformed girl, it was also a giant spider, like Quelaag. She looked younger than Quelaag, though, so I assumed she was her daughter. Or something. I was kinda scared to talk to her, because, like I said earlier--I totally just slaughtered her mother the other day, for no other reason than because she was in my way, and I had to ring a bell for... reasons that have yet to be disclosed.

It was here that I began to question whether I was the "good guy" in this story. I'm definitely not a hero, by any stretch of the imagination. I've rescued three people, sure--but it wasn't up until very recently that I had any personal drive to help anyone other than myself in this game. Practically everything I've done so far up to this point has been to destroy anything that's obstructing my forward path--so maybe, ethically speaking, I'm in no position to be in this room right now. I dunno, but it was a strange moment for me. I was genuinely uncomfortable in that room.

Well, considering that she wasn't mauling me to death in revenge, I figured it would be safe to speak to her. Hell, maybe she wanted her mother dead. Can't blame her; she was kind of a psychotic bitch. The Poison Mist description said that she spoke a tongue I wouldn't be able to understand. In actuality, she didn't say anything at all. Her dialogue was merely, "...?"

I was then given a couple of options. Interestingly, she was capable of upgrading my Estus Flask. That means she's the Keeper of this bonfire--which means she's cursed to keep it lit forever, as far as I know about Fire Keepers. I did pick up a FKS, though, and since it's been burning a hole in my inventory, there was no reason not to boost my flask. Finally, I have +1 Estus. One drink gives me about 70% back, now. Anyway, the other thing I could've done was join her covenant, but I had no desire to whatsoever. I didn't want to become one of her egg-bearers.

Eingyi was useless--I was expecting him to teach me some interesting pyromancies, but he only sold one useless item--a list of people who are a part of his covenant. I left, feeling kinda empty.


So, let's talk about those stupid illusory walls in Blighttown real quick. I'll wrap things up here.

I found the first illusory wall on my own, almost by instinct. Pretty cool, right? All that was behind it was Twin Humanities, though. I like collecting Humanity, but I wanted a little something more than that. I left the area disappointed. Later, my friend just up and tells me where the second wall is.

...It's literally behind the first illusory wall. Not five meters apart from each other. You hit the first wall, pick up the item, and then there's a second fake wall behind it. That is... the dumbest thing... I have ever seen.

So what's behind the wall? Oh, no big deal. It's just an entire area. WHAT? How are they gonna hide an entire area under two illusory walls? How is anyone playing offline supposed to figure that out? Am I in the wrong here? Am I just an idiot? Am I supposed to know intuitively that some illusory walls are going to have MORE illusory walls underneath them, and that they could lead to entirely new areas!?

I could probably rant about that for another five paragraphs, but I won't.

Basically, the new area is called the Great Hollow. I'll save that for a bigger update.

Hey Verb if you dont intend on going back to the Berg for anything serious....may I suggest you, to go kill that shitface merchant?

I know you get a cool weapon out of this, but I'm not really into killing innocent people for my own personal gain.

Plus, I still need him for Firebombs.

I typed that up rather hastily, so, sorry if none of it made any sense.

Basically, I found the bonfire in Quelaag's Domain, and I gained access to the Great Hollow. Ranted about illusory walls for a bit, and how stupid it is that they'd have an NPC that looks just like an enemy.

I'm actually deep in New Londo at the moment, so my next update will focus on the Great Hollow -> New Londo Ruins. And since Pip has forbid me from completing New Londo Ruins on my own terms, I'll be heading to Sen's Fortress soon. It's about time.