Day Six of being sick. You know the song and dance. I’m sick. I’m sick of being sick. I’m sick of being sick of being sick. It would be easier if I just had the flu or something. Then, I could be full-out sick for three days, feel like shit, but be better in a fairly short amount of time. I have something I like to call the low-grade crud. It’s not serious, but it’s enervating. When I try to practice, I break out into a sweat after doing a few postures. That’s not a good thing. My teacher always tells me to stop if that happens, so I do. I’m tempted to go further, but I know that’s a bad thing.
Anyway, the one thing I’ve been able to do is play Dark Souls. It’s not very taxing*, but it’s something I can do when I’m not in tip-top shape. Today was more of a grinding day than anything else. I set goals for my character that are outside of my usual parameters. One, I’m rocking all of Havel’s armor. It’s one of the biggest and beefiest armors in the game, and Havel the Rock is a pretty cool NPC. His armor set is in every game, and a cool iteration of him appears in DS III. I had to pump several levels into endurance to wear it, and I’m having to add more because the badass strength weapons I’ve been saving have more weight than the base weapons, obviously. I’ve been rocking the Black Knight Sword +5 up until now. It’s a fantastic weapon, and one I mained at the end of my original playthrough. However, I got a Black Knight Greataxe drop, so I switched to that because it’s fucking badass. And it’s an axe. Which, as I’ve said a time or a hundred, is my jam. Plus, it’s better than my BKS, so I upped my endurance so I can wield it with a shield–my Silver Knight Shield. I like to have the shield to block, then quickly switch to two-handing my weapon.
I’ve been playing with some other weapons. The Greataxe is like coming home again, though it’s not exactly the same, but I’m not going to use it because I mained it all the way through the third game. I tried out the Golem Axe, and it has a really cool two-handed strong attack that sends shock waves at enemies, but it feels short in comparison to my other weapons. I upgraded the Capra Demon’s Machete (OK, it’s actually the Demon Great Machete), and it’s fun, but I’m not really into it. I would like to get another one so I can cosplay as the Capra Demon, but it’s still not my favorite weapon. I have 40 strength right now, and the next weapon I can wield takes 46 strength. Sure, I can do it with two hands, probably,** but I like playing with my shield. That hasn’t changed and probably won’t. I do like quickly switching between holding it and two-handing my weapon, though. There is something powerful about slamming a BKGA with two hands into someone’s head. By the way, I learned today that you get extra souls for executing a special kill. A backstab, a two-handed heavy attack, and I’m assuming a parry and a riposte.
I am crushing the game right now. 40 strength, 40 endurance, 25 vitality. I have 18 dex, which is enough to wield my Black Knight weapons. I like having more vit, but that’s enough with these stats. I took on the Tomb of the Giants, which is one of my most hated areas of the game. It’s completely black except for some prism stones here and there. Maybe some mood lighting, but if you don’t have a light source, then you’re fucked. As a caster, I can use Cast Light, which makes the darkness incidental. There’s also a helmet that gives light, but that’s a drop in the Lost Izalith area, which is my least favorite area, so I leave it for last. I used a skull lantern, which is fine, but again, no shield. Since I know the areas, however, I have the drop on the enemies. I know what’s coming and when, which takes away a large part of what makes Souls games so successful. New terrain, new enemies, new surprises. You don’t know what’s coming, but you know it’s going to be challenging in one way or another. The games are designed to overwhelm you, and they’re very good at doing that.
One of the bosses I had the hardest time beating in this playthrough was the Bell Gargoyles. Why? Because it’s one of the bosses I used Solaire to beat twice. It’s early in the game, so being overpowered in any way hasn’t happened yet. Plus, there are two of them, which makes them twice as hard, obviously. Still. They weren’t bad. Even though they killed me the first time, I knew I could take them. I died three more times to them, not counting once when they pushed me off the fucking roof. I don’t count those kinds of death. I was pretty damn proud when I beat the Gargoyles on my own. Honestly, they weren’t that difficult, and I’m embarrassed that they were the reason I almost quit the game for good the first time.
The other biggest problem when it comes to death is the fucking platforming. I hate it. I hate it a lot. I hate it so much I want to punch it in the face. Oh my god. I get pissed just thinking about it. There’s an area called The Hollow which is just a bigass tree, and you have to find your way down it. That involves running down the branches, but then you have to jump from one to another, and you have to guess which ones will bear your weight. You also have to guess if you’re just in the right position or not because an inch or two to either side means doom. There is platforming in every Souls game, and god, it just sucks.
OK. I’m tired, so I’m going to wrap this up for now. I’m sorry that my posts have been so short lately, but it’s the best I can do right now.
*Only because I’ve played so much of it and have gotten really beefy for this playthrough.
**The original game is weird about two-handing. In DS II and DS III, it simply takes half the stats needed if you two-hand. In the original, who knows?