With Vordt gone, the Undead Settlement was a...mostly unpleasant surprise, as I got lost about a dozen times and died without recovering my souls about half that. This marks DS3's attempt at a sort of more open world environment where you have more places to explore per area and which is absolute murder for people who want to compulsively scour every corner in fear of having missed something before moving forward, like me. Nevertheless, after slogging through, getting bonked over the head repeatedly by the Evangelists, having a meeting with two very differently cheerful fellows (Egon of Carim and Siegward of Catarina, no relation), the Rotted Greatwood, a solid contender for the title of buggiest boss in the series to date, died (or, I guess, finished rotting) and I got the transposing kiln to make a nice sword out of its soul. And a ring out of Vordt's (which I fairly quickly stopped using and started wishing I'd gotten the hammer not long afterwards).
Fuck the Road of Sacrifices. Seriously, fuck it.
First it was the bird-man-beastmen hitting for unconscionably large amounts of damage if they didn't die before transforming (even as I was frantically upgrading VIT and armor to catch up). Then after the Halfway Fortress and meeting the delightful Anri of Astora (again, no relation) and her companion "Grrrrrrrr *thrusting motion*" (as he introduced himself, giving me another Covenant trinket in the process), the Forest of Crucifixion begun.
SERIOUSLY, FUCK TREE CARRYING HOLLOWS. Fuck the absurd damage they do (almost twice as much as a trained Lothric knight using an actual goddamn metal pointy spear). Fuck their charge hitting half a dozen times, almost certainly staggering me through my shield, and having among the buggiest hitboxes known to man where they'd hit me for full damage when dodging through almost the entire front half of the tree trunk. But most of all fuck rheir stupid aggro range where they'd charge me if they so much as caught a whiff of my cape. Worse than the crabs. Way worse than the crabs.
That fun eventually done with (oh, and for further apoplexy, I didn't discover the bonfire INSIDE the swamp until I'd already cleared the entire area and checked the wiki to make sure I hadn't missed anything) I moved past (it would be too quaint to say I "fought" it considering how easy it was, particularly with Egon of Carim in the wings) the Crystal Sage and reached a crossroads in my journey, left leading to the Cathedral of the Deeps and right to Farron Keep. My previous consultation with the
suggested I hit the Cathedral of the Deeps first to acquire tools that would make my trip through Farron Keep easier, so as a true contrarian I declared I liked the castle architecture better and anyway, I'd had enough of Miyazaki poison swamps in my life anyway, what was one more? and thus dove into the route to Farron Keep.
Fuck that swamp too.
If you notice any inconsistencies in my post, it's because I had to go back and delete most of my previous rant. Why? Because this swamp of pain and the previous lake of pain completely ran together in my memory even though I only got through them two days ago. They are annoying areas filled with gotchas, ugly trees, and water. The swamp being poisonous didn't even make that much difference, other than it eventually forcing me to buy some purple moss clumps. I still spent most of my time trudging around in it poisoned anyway, it didn't cause that much damage and even with full poison-resisting gear there was no real way to avoid getting poisoned anyway if you wanted to get all the good stuff. The old wolf bonfire saved me so hard I pledged to the Wolves of Farron covenant immediately, and I even actually wore their trinket this time. Getting Havel's ring for evicting the demon squatting on their roof was also a godsent considering my proclivity for heavy (well, medium at this point) armor.
After eventually lighting all the fires and getting through everything, fighting the Abyss Watchers themselves was almost a letdown. Granted, once again I availed myself of a summon (this time the Pale Shadow of Londor, probably an actual relation given his complexity), but for a fairly hyped up newbie wall boss they barely put up a big fight. The way forward opened once again, but being conservative of my newly gained wealth of souls I stopped exploring the Catacombs after getting crushed by a giant ball on a set of stairs that I know I didn't trigger myself. I managed to run up and retrieve them and turned back for the Cathedral of the Deeps, after a stopover to Firelink to invest them. Somewhere around here is the bit where I started considering saving up to cure the Dark Sigil, since the more Yoel (and later Yuria) fawned over me the more I saw that heading towards a Bad End, for the world if not for yours truly. For the time being, being far from the goal and about to enter a brand new area that was sure to kill me in new and exciting ways, I invested them in getting and infusing the Wolf Knight Greatsword, because it looked sick as fuck and because "extra damage to creatures of the Abyss" is one of those things guaranteed to come in handy sooner or later.
I don't have much to say about the Cathedral itself, other than it was again more annoying than challenging. The endless undead in the graveyard on one side were more of a chore than a challenge (because I was like 10 damage short of the threshold for killing them with one-handed R1's), the bleeding worm undead on the other side were worse (and their bleeding worm debuff can go right to hell, not only were they invisible most of the time, how was I supposed to figure out using a torch kills them?) but easily dispatched, and the climb upwards that makes up the majority of the level rife with "surprise thrall butseks" ambushes in narrow ledges. At least they didn't quite pull off an Anor Londo Silver Knights move this time. Yet. The giant inside was a fun challenge (or would be if my character hadn't hit an air walking glitch that caused me to lose my fucking souls the second attempt through), Rosaria's Covenant was discovered and NOT pledged to (she may be hot, but if she sleeps with worm undead and won't talk, she ain't the one, champ) and the Deacons of the Deep, present Anri and Horace, didn't even live long enough for me to enjoy their theme before they snuffed it for good. (I put it up on YouTube, it's great).
Which brings us to now: with High King Skeletor dead and the Catacombs hopefully fully explored, I put a pin on moving on to colder climates and decided to dig down further, which has led me to a lot of lava, lava versions of the swamp Beastmen that somehow poison you even faster, some sort of lightning worm I put off until I could find a way to disable its artillery support, a lake, rats, and the return of the Basilisks In A Tiny Room which cost me another 20k souls (more specifically, return of the Greatsword Spam Guy in a tiny corridor got me the first time, and my impatience caused me to die to the Basilisks the second). After Im done with them, there's a fog gate with my name on it. No clue who's behind it, should be fun. Then to deliver the sad news to Anri, and then onwards to frostier climes!
Oh, speaking of which, during my visit to the Cathedral some hooded motherfucker sucked me into a painting. Again. At least this time they let me warp out because the locals here were way too unfriendly (and hard hitting) for my current level.
Originally Posted by FSF 5, Chapter 14: Gold and Lions I
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
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