You awaken in the undead asylum. And it is time to escape. So…… a few boulders and one dead asylum demon later, a giant bird picks you up at a cliff and drops you off at the firestone shrine. From here, you have to ring the two bells of awakening, which will grant you access to Sen’s Fortress and through it Anor Londo and the Lordvessel. Once you have acquired the Lordvessel, you must kill Seathe the Scaleless, Nito the Gravelord, The Four Kings, and the Bed of Chaos to obtain their souls and fill in the Lordvessel to gain access to the Kiln of the First Flame. Once there, you must kill Lord Gwyn and then you have a decision to make. Do you light the bonfire at the center of the world, extending the Age of the Gods but giving up your life in the process. Or do you let it die out and become the Dark Lord? Either way, the game ends there.

The first boss in the game. Basically put, the guy is big and slow and meant for newbies to be able to beat him. You encounter him in the Undead Asylum during your escape. He's a giant version of a stereotypical imp. And the fight starts off with teaching you how to plummet off of ledges to do more than half of his health worth of damage to him. Then all his moves are very slow and very well telegraphed, and he can't do enough damage to one shot even the most squishy character. Since you can kite him...... well estus flasks make the battle kind of easy as well.

On new game plus the dude does a lot more damage and actually becomes a threat, but people still kill him for a special weapon without doing the plummet this time around. Doing the plummet..... boss is still easy.

Encountered at the beginning of the demon ruins, this boss is a giant lava creature you have to kill to stop its ceasless discharge of lava into the ruins below. So.... well so that you can walk across the ground currently covered by a lava flow.


This is the first boss where I am going to take the position that if you can use an easy repeatable method to kill it without having to actually fight it very much .... then the boss is easy.

In this case, a surefire way to kill this boss on your first attempt is to run back to the fog gate, wait for him to try to punch you, and deal about 500 damage to his hand. This makes him fall to his death without even putting a real dent in his life bar.

And even if you don't cheese the boss, it's the first fight in the ruins out of..... a lot, and the boss telegraphs his moves well enough that he is easy to deal with.

The third boss in the demon ruins and the one you fight for a ring that lets you survive lava for short periods of time. It's a giant cenitpede looking thing with multiple centipedes acting as its limbs (its bipedal with a tail).

This is one of those bosses where you can literally hug his legs and the boss will do one extremely well telegraphed move that is easy to dodge over and over. This is one of those bosses where because of this people literally unequip their weapons and bare fist punch the boss to death for fun.

Ignoring this, the boss can be cheesed as well. Although that is significantly harder than just killing it, the cheesing method is still easy enough that..... the boss is just too easy.

And this all persists into new game plus. Just because you can hit harder does not mean you can actually hit. The only reason this boss has any real difficulty at all is its tendency to just stand in a lava pool until you piss it off enough to lure it away.

A witch turned demon during the Bed of Chaos incident...... she has the upper body of a woman and her lower body is... well a giant spider. With its own mouth. That can breath lava.

On the first time around, the summonable ai character can kill this boss for you. With no real difficulty to the fight at all. The seocnd time around, the ai character does enough damage over time and distracts the boss enough that it's still a trivial fight.

This is ignoring the rampant extremely well-telegraphed moves that the boss has.

This boss is a giant lady with a dragon tail (one of her parents was a dragon) that can control snow and turn herself invisible. She also has extremely damaging attacks that inflict bleed. So the fight must be hard right? I mean.... before I realized how to beat her, this boss seemed like I might have screwed myself (only boss that has to be beaten to leave an area if you pick a fight with her).

Wrong.

To begin with, on your first attempt, you get one free attack with no retaliation beforehand. On subsequent attempts (assuming one is needed), the boss is easy enough that you don't have to care.

Basically put.. the only reason that the boss is hard at all is that you have trouble seeing her. The solution? Go stand by the exit and start spamming projectiles in the only direction of approach (and/or attacks). The boss can't actually absorb that much damage (especially if you used your free hit well), and ... well she dies very fast since she doesn't seem smart enough not to try to sneak up on you when you are standing on the exit platform.

And..... I can confirm that on newgame plus this gets absolutely no harder. By the time you get here it will be about as even as it was last time, with the boss being slightly harder.... but the same strategy still works and is a relatively easy win (especially with pyromancy).

It's a version of the asylum demon that is on fire and carrying a cool mage staff. Also found in the demon ruins (some easy bosses here huh?).

You can literally run to the corner to the far back and right from where you entered and the boss will infinitely walk towards you on a tree branch. Any projectile, even a few hundred arrows from a bow (if you suck; 50-100 is usually all an actual bow wielder will need), can then finish off the boss with zero danger involved.

A giant wolf guarding the grave of the abysswalker artorius. He uses the Greatsword of Artorius (in his mouth!!!) to do devastating combos that can one shot most players.

This boss is one of the harder ones if you actually try to engage it in combat, but also one of the most satisfying.

However...... you can snipe him from outside the arena after you've triggered his appearance once. Thus there is literally no way to get stuck on this boss ever. That literally takes the difficulty out of it.

The final boss of the game, he is a combo master that can easily run over even the most hardy players. Except...

Weak to fire and easy to cheese with combustion and great combustion. For the final boss this dude is disappointing, as he will infinitely sidestep (while taking damage) if you try to use a combustion on him with a high enough level pyromancy flame.

It's literally the boss where you can hug its backside and almost never be in danger. This is the literal most well-telegraphed easy to dodge boss fight in the game.

BTW it's a giant iron golem.

A giant butterfly you fight on a narrowish bridge. It is rarely within melee range and does tons of magic damage.

Why is this boss easy then?

Well A) the npc character just destroys it without your help, B) the boss lands every so often and a good melee character can kill it on new game before it ever gets back up, and C)..... all of it's attacks are really really easy to dodge and happen infrequently enough that you can just block and heal through them too. Even on new game plus, all it really receives is a damage increase that lets it one shot you if you are unprepared. But it's very very hard to be unprepared here.

The boss of the end of the Catacombs, this dude was meant to be beatable within 2 hours of starting the game and is literally intended to be your first real boss fight if you so choose. This is only for people who want to run past the dungeon on their first playthrough or wait until their 2nd of course. This..... means he is way too easy for the area he is in. If you can get through the catacombs, then the boss is simple as pie. As for what he actually does... well he teleports, makes copies of himself, and throws easy to dodge fireballs as his only attack.

The second boss for most players and the second boss you get to leap down upon from on high. It's a big bull demon early on that has all the weaknesses of the asylum demon.

Every so often npc's attack you. Ignoring the fact that they don't have that much health, and you can use your shield, and you can probably just outright stun lock several of them, and...... i'm not going to finish. These are easy fights unless you get surprised.

Basically put... it's a big beefy slightly higher attack minion in an early game area that is very easy to deal with but was awarded the rank of mini-boss.

These tend to be well-telegraphed 1 on 1 fights vs an enemy that doesn't have enough health to keep it up.

By the time you get to these non-respawning enemies in this area, 2-3 hits from any elemental attack just kills them outright without much danger to you.

The hardest part of this fight is killing off the surrounding enemies and surviving its water bullets on the approach (dude is in the middle of a wide open area).

Once you get close to it...... well the boss switches to pure 100% blockable and healable large spaces in between attacks melee tactics. It's ......well honestly it's just a patience game at that point.

Pretty freaking deadly if you actually get in the cage with it, this mini-boss can be shot with zero danger from several surrounding areas. At close range. Thus it really poses no great threat.'

The Large Ember is found in the Depths guarded by the Butcher. To get to this point you must have killed the Capra Demon. Since I consider that one of the hardest early bosses in the game... this is one well-earned. The actual butcher fight and trek down here isn't much compared to the Capra Demon, but it's the weakest Ember in the game.

This lets you boost your normal weapons to +10 (more damage) and to raw +5 (a ton of damage but gets rid of scaling).

This lets you ascend normal +10 and raw +5 weapons further to normal +15. Don't be fooled by the vanillaness of it. These do more physical damage end game than any other weapons except possibly some boss weapons.

You get this ember at the bottom of New Londo Ruins where it is guarded by ghosts and darkwraiths. Unlocking this spot in general requires some nasty feats to be performed by the player, and then you have to go past some of the toughest enemies in the game AND find the stupid thing. It's much easier to get once you know where it is...... but it's also kind of well hidden and easily missable in one of the hardest areas of the game.

This lets you ascend normal +5 weapons through the divine path up to divine +5.

This ember is the easiest in the game to get honestly and is guarded by the Moonlight Butterfly. As in, kill the boss and the ember is down the new path. Simple.

Divine weapons..... they destroy enemies in the catacombs and tomb of the giants. As in they can stunlock most of the enemies in the first area and do severe damage to enemies in both areas.

In addition, they do a lot of damage to the boss of the new londo ruins and scale based off of your faith (with str and dex scaling still but severely reduced). And they prevent necromancers from resurrecting things. Which I tell you right now is mandatory in that area.

Divine +5 -> Divine +10

Found in the Tomb of the Giants guarded by a large number of giant skeletons in close quarters. Basically... it's a suicide run where you hope to get to the chest and open it before you die. Usually requiring multiple attempts. In THE hardest area of the game.

Divine + 5 -> Occult +5

Found in the Painted World of Ariamis in... well a giant ambush area in the Annex. Don't know what the Annex is. The annex is a pain in the @#$ completely optional area guarded by the annoying enemy of the area in droves. That's what that is.

Occult weapons do extra damage to black knights and silver knights and 1.5 bosses and that's it. No advantage elsewhere. But.... those are some really really annoying enemies to do extra damage to. Higher physical scaling but lower faith scaling, this is semi-equivalent on a well balanced character to divine weapons in terms of damage to neutral enemies.

Guarded by two mushroom parents in another suicide run in Sif's area of the Darkroot Garden, this is ... you die to get this one.

Allows magic +5 -> enchanted +5.

Magic and enchanted are live occult and divine respectively but for magic instead of faith.

Magic +5 -> Magic +10.

You know that large room where you first fight (and lose to) Seathe. Well after you beat Seathe in the Crystal Caves you can go back there and this will be in a chest. Since you've had to kill Seathe...... again impressive. Ignoring the fact that it's in a very annoying location to get to.

Found lying around in the Duke's Archives in a room you have to go to.

The only truly useless upgrade path in the game, this lets you use normal +10 -> Crystal +5.

Crystal weapons do a ton of damage more but have 1/10th the health of normal weapons and can't be repaired. Once broken they are effectively useless.

Thus...... waste of souls and an upgrade path honestly. Not even that hard to get at this stage in the game either.

Less damage than fire weapons but damage scales with something..... your amount of humanity.

Flame +5 -> Chaos path

An almost useless upgrade path, this is much worse than fire +10 when fully upgraded without humanity (aka, you died; once; that's all it takes) and only slightly beats it if holding a lot of humanity.

And it's another suicide run ember in the middle of freaking lava surrounded by..... a whole heck of a lot of taurus demons.

Flame +5 -> Flame +10 path

Flame weapons do a lot of raw damage (like lightning) with the benefit of more enemies being weak to fire. But no damage scaling.

To get this, you have to kill about 4 taurus demons, several minor demons, and 5 or 6 burrowing rockworms. In an area where it's easy to get pushed off a ledge or just plain trampled because you didn't have room to maneuver.

You have two choices. You can come in from the Depths. To get to this door you will have killed 3 or 4 bosses and..... you will have gone through most of 2 or 3 entire levels by now. Then you have to climb through the rafters of blighttown, trying to survive flaming dogs and the residents themselves. The prior is an aggro machine, while the latter is a tank. And all the while Blowdart Snipers, one of the most annoying enemies in the game because of their range and the fact that they can inflict toxic on you... you will die a lot just trying to get out of this area. Luckily the snipers don't respawn. They just kill you within 10 seconds every time they do 2 or 3 hits to you. Oh and did I mention the mosquitoes?

Then, once you've finallly made it to the bottom of the area, you get to deal with the blighttown swamp. The Blighttown Swamp is... the water literally poisons you. While it's not as bad as toxic, it's almost unavoidable without extremely good foreknowledge AND practice. All the while, these brutish versions of the enemis above with about 600-70 health on the first playthrough will be throwing boulders at you and all around just making your day suck. Add in firebreathing spiders and we haven't even gotten to the boss yet and.... this area sucks.

Then you get to the boss. And while I listed Chaos Witch Quelaag as kind of easy.... you still have to kill her after climbing her hill guarded by some very tough enemies. And.... the area is just a status condition nightmare all the way from the detphs down to the boss, which you will spend a few hours getting into and out of. Assuming you can kill quelaag.

The other way in? Well through the Valley of the Drakes you can get to an alternate entrance that kind of maybe.... still sucks. But not as much. But it still sucks. But you get to the swamp in like 8-10 minutes instead of like an hour.

You have to come to this area to kill Quelaag for the story.

This is a completely optional area. First things first.... the entrance is in a corner of Blighttown swamp that is noticeably more dangerous than the corner where Quelaag lives. And it's guarded by two secret entrances meant to trick you. And once you get in there.....

So first things first the fact that this area requires you to enter through that area is bad enough right there. But I digress.

So the Great Hollow is one big descent. First things first, it is extremely easy to fall to your death. You are literally abusing tightrope physics that don't work as well as they could... and you can fall a VERY LONG time before hitting bottom.

The descent is guarded by a tougher version of basilisks that can and will do their best to inflict curse on you (insta death and permanant half health until cured after that). And the bottom... there are a lot of mushroom parents that can 2 shot you easily and take several fireballs a piece to kill.

The main reason to come here honestly is the Cloranthy Ring. One of the three best rings in the game, it makes your stamina regenerate faster. Noticeably.

Once you get to the bottom..... well you get to enter the next area on our list.

My favorite area in the game. Bar none. And arguably the most atmospheric. If it weren't for the Painted World of Ariamis, this area would have no competition in these categories.

You are at the heart of the world. As solemn music plays, you stare at trees reaching to.... is that the sky? I thought you were underground. It's misty but.... are those trees holding up the world?

Ash Lake has some minor enemies. Some minor annoyances honestly compared to the Great Hollow. And one big freaking looking Black Hydra trying to kill you.

That's right. A mini-boss (ok seriously; why the **** is this still just considered a mini-boss?) harasses you throughout the entire area in a gauntlet with little to no cover until you reach the very end to .... join a covenant and cut off a dragon's tail. This thing..... the black hydra demands respect. So much so that I always elect to kill it before proceeding. Which... is its own set of problems. Unlike the hydra above, this thing is a menace smart enough to well...... not be tricked into infinite melee loops. Ok so the normal hydra ai is bad. But this thing... it's water bullets do a ton of damage and it will harass you. If you try to kill it then it's only really doable at the beginning and you have to get in range with very little cover, trying to lure it into a few attacks before the thing decides to back off.

Honestly? The scenery is its own reward and will have to be because none of the loot down here is worth it.

Home to two of the hardest bosses in the game, the silver knights, and the infamous dual dragon archer bridge. And a slew of other tough enemies. The area is.... it's hard enough that I'm just going to describe the 3 biggest problems here (other than how freaking tough the silver knights are).

So the literal most frustrating part of the game, bar none, is a very narrow ledge in which you must run up it, and then try to kill the dragon archer to your right. The entire time both archers, one left and one right, will be shooting at you. And they aren't really killable except at melee range or really freaking good aim with poison arrows. And..... these dudes inflict so much stun that is common to fall to your death literal dozens of times before making it past this one challenge. Ignoring the rest of the level, this alone merits an inclusion in the list of hard areas.

There is also an optional boss here known as the Dark Sun Gwyndolin. Basically put...... very hard to home in on, he is always running away in an endless corridor. And... the dude packs a serious punch with those fireballs.

And finally.. well Ornstein and Smough are the main boss of the area.

Well. You get here after the Duke's Archives. And every enemy here is some form of powerhouse. And at the bottom is Seathe the Scaleless, a boss that specializes in inflicting curse on people while just doing tons of raw damage.

And... there are no checkpoints in this area. And ..... it's easy to fall to your death because some of the platforms are 100% invisible. And you have to run across wide stretches of them. And.... it's just easy to fall to your death because the entire freaking area is kind of tilted AND slippery.

Ghosts. Ghosts make this area hard. Ghosts can go through all objects, and you need a consumable item, a cursed weapon (very rare; as in only 2 exist), or to be under the effects of a curse to even be able to damage them at all. And they do tons of aggro damage. And they freaking swarm you. And ... they act as traps by coming out of the floor. And...... ghosts be ghosts. And once you manage to de-flood the area, there are darkwraith enemies walking around in the lower parts in addition to ghosts that make silver knights look like puppies next to a wolf. And you finally get to the boss area, and you have to take a leap of faith.

Oh but you better have that ring. You fall to your death and never enter the area known as THE ABYSS if you don't have that ring.

Only accessible if a useless ring is taking up one of your two all important ring slots, this area exists solely to house the boss of New Londo Ruins and force you to go fight Sif to get the ring so that you can even enter. The boss...... is the second hardest boss in the game after Ornstein and Smough. And you will die to them. A LOT. And since the closest bonfire is in Firelink Shrine, literally...... this area be evil.

This is harder than the area that comes after it, which is Lost Izalith. Because Lost Izalith has relatively easy enemies compared to this place. This place....... taurus demons, capra demons, dragon zombies, and burrowing rockworms are common enemies. That sums it up.

Two are bosses. Dragon Zombies are... they will roflstomp you very quickly and must be run from, especially on new game plus. And the rockworms..... their spit corrodes your equipment to broken in one or two hits. And while most of these enemies can kind of be avoided...... you need to directly challenge them for the two embers here and the dragon zombies literally had to have their ai be patched to make them fair in a game that prides itself on difficulty.

Most beatiful area in the game.... infested by toxic zombies that throw fire, crow demons, one undead dragon, a black knight in a very tricky spot, and skeleton wheels that you have to get past. With an invisble but optional boss fight.

This is one giant trap-filled descent surrounded by skeletons. Which hit very hard. And if you aren't using a divine weapon... well then the skeletons all come back to life without your death or rest at a bonfire until you manage to hunt down the non-respawning necromancers. At the bottom.. well is a pit of the 2nd hardest common enemy in the game. Skeleton wheels. They do so much damage to you WHILE eating up your stamina bar and .... then they just roll away. When surrounded by them.... you die very very fast.
Compared to his area, the boss is very easy.

Only accessible from the boss room of the catacombs. The demon ruins glow eerily in the distance. And.... you can't see ****. This area is so dark that you have 4 options. 1) Dedicate an attunement slot to a spell you have to cast every so often (minor but still an inconvenience). 2) Replace your helm with the sunlight maggot helm, a piece of crap defense wise that nevertheless will let you see. 3) Replace your shield with a lantern (bad idea). or 4) wander around in the dark and only know an enemy is there when you are right on top of it (better than 3) but still a crap option). So you've got to pick 1 or 2. And still not be able to see more than 5-10 feet in front of you.

And we haven't even gotten to the enemies yet.

If you had to rate the top 10 hardest common enemies in the game, the Tomb of the Giants would grab at least 3 of the spots. Skeleton dogs, Giant Skeletons, and Bone Towers make this one of the hardest areas in the game even without the whole darkness thing. I mean.... I would rate skeleton dogs as the hardest common enemy in the game and giant skeletons as number 3 in these kinds of numbers..... there are a lot of giant skeletons here.

And at the bottom is.. Gravelord Nito. Who acts as his own necromancer for giant skeleton minions in his little boss arena. It's fun.

Hardest boss in the main game and second only to manus in difficulty.

Dragonslayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough are a tagteam boss at the end of Anor Londo. The whole game has literally been building up to this fight. And they want to make sure you know it. It starts out as a simple tag team boss fight where they are tough as crap, and one is weak to fire while the other is weak to lightning and both have resistances to the opposite. The problem being they both have about 2k health and their own health bard and both move very fast, with ornstein being fastest with his spear and smough doing the most damage with his hammer. And...... it's 2 on 1 with them being tougher. It's very hard to find a chance to heal and/or attack through such a barrage, and ...... it's already very hard.

When one of them dies, the true boss fight begins. The other gets healed to full health and grows to giant size by absorbing his dead friend. Weak now only to fire (and even then not much), this massive boss will do lightning aoe attacks that beat the everliving **** out of you. And..... they are very fast too. Super Ornstein is noticeably faster with combos, while Super Smough once again does more raw damage. And..... if you can beat this part you will be very very very happy and get the ability to warp around between some bonfires.

The boss in the abyss at the end of new londo ruins. Basically put... it's a damage race in which the otehr guy can kill you in 2-3 hits. You start out with one king. And if you don't kill it fast... well then you will have two double-teaming you. And then 3. And then finally 4. Thoeretically, it's infinite, although it's really only 4 of them's worth of health in the health bard. And..... the dude's attacks are not well telegraphed and just genuinely hard to dodge. And doing enough damage to prevent getting outnumbered..... it takes quite a bit of skill and luck. Again, this is a boss you will be happy to have to never see again on that playthrough.

Basically put, this boss has tons of cheap kills. When trying to kill this the first time, I died 34 times. 2 of them felt like genuinely my fault and the other 32 felt like the ai was cheating. It's a verr very poorly designed boss with a 5-10 minute run-to that just kills you cheaply over and over and over. Usually through unavoidable falling deaths.

It's a giant flaming tree monster animated by a core.

This boss is the first thing you see in the dlc, and it's extremely fast and very very good at dodging your moves. To the point where landing a hit is a credible problem. On top of this, it's attack patters are genuinely hard to avoid properly and can't really be blocked that much. And...... it's very very fast and very very good at combos.

And if you come back later... there will be two of them there.

Extremely fast. Extremely high damage output. And extremely good at combos. This boss annihilates you several times before you can even think of going toe to toe with him. And even then...... his combination of speed and power are truly insane. And about a third of the way into the fight he "powers up". No real safe spot to heal and no real good way to defend against several of his fastest attacks just makes this one hard.

Fast. Extremely high damage output. And extremely extremely good at combos. It's one of the fastest bosses in the game with the highest consistent damage output and the highest health by far. And I sound like a broken record. His dark magic attacks however....... they are very hard to dodge and destroy all newcomers.

Basically put.... this dude spams very very long combos that can and will kill you of very hard to dodge attacks that can reduce you to no health in relatively short order from full health no matter how overleveled you are. Melee range is extremely dangerous. Unfortunately..... you have to kill the boss at some point and he specializes in having some of the best reach if not THE best, of any boss in the game. He literally breaks every rule about how big enemies are theoretically supposed to move, there is no kiting him, there is no staying near his back and trying to back away when the aoe comes. The dude just destroys you over and over and over until your skills are near perfect. A truly fitting hardest boss in the game...... but **** it the dude is hard.

There are the blighttown denizens and brutes. They have way too much health for that point in the game. And do extreme amounts of damage for that point in the game. And.... they are just hard to deal with at that poin in the game.

There are the blowdart snipers. If these were respawning enemies it would kind of ruin the area completely. They inflict the most damaging poison on you in the game that can have you on the ground faster than you can get to a bonfire in a lot of cases, unless you have a ton of flasks left AND make a beeline. Again, too hard at that point in the game (about 1/3 of the way in to somewhere at the beginning? That's right. This is one of the beginning dungeons on new game plus.

There are the ghosts of new londo ruins and the burrowing rockworms of the demon ruins. Those are self explanatory if you read the above. As well as taurus and capra demons being common enemies (a capra demon was a boss from earlier in the game that just barely missed the above post; it is a smallish demon that can out aggro a lot of other enemies and has some 800-1000 health; a single one is a fierece opponent; 6 of them at once.....).

There are the snakemen of Sen's Fortress. Again, way too much health compared to all previous areas, these single handedly force you to start using at least pyromancy on a lot of melee characters. If they ever assaulted you in numbers....... thank heavens that they do not. With the poise of a god (can't be staggered), the melee versions do a lot of damage and can block or avoid a large number of your attacks. And the wizarding ones..... they have both highly damaging lightning attacks to rain down upon you from ledges AND they have an extreme close range aggro attack that can kill you from slightly over normal safe range.

There are the denizens of the oolacile township. Aside from the aggro attacks on the mages, they are basically the equivalent of higher health/damage snake-men with less dodging ability. Except they assault you in numbers.......

There are the toxic zombies. If you don't kill them at range or with fire, they inflict toxic on you. Which as established is very very deadly.

There are the crow demons. They have some of the strongest fast damage in the game.

There are the pinwheel skeletons. As established the second hardest enemy in the game. And..... they are hard to actually hit in the large areas they reside in. A single one landing a hit may kill you from full health depending on where you are, and s single one can drain enough of your stamina that in packs they can double team you.

There are the skeleton towers. Effectively put..... they are large moving walls in the tomb of the giants that act as traps and discourage attacking them at melee range.

There are the giant skeletons. Way too much health at any point in the game, they can kill you in two or three hits most of the time and assault you in packs in several areas.

There are the skeleton dogs..... these massive enemies are the most dangerous enemy in the game and just flat-outright you don't want it to know you are there. Best to run past it if you can, melee fighting these is suicide and it takes a couple fireballs to kill one. During which time it will do its best to smack you around so severely that one attack can and will do lethal sometimes, depending on your armor and character.

At the bottom of the tomb of the giants the pinwheel boss becomes a common enemy but without the copying or teleporting. Still..... those fireballs hurt.

There are the necromancers. Skeletons are bad enough and can kill you on a bad day. Reassembling resurrecting skeletons... that's a no-no. And the dudes raining fireballs upon you in the mix and resurrecting them..... well you don't like them.

There are the silver and black knights. Basically put...... they have excellent guard and do tons of damage to your health and/or stamina gauges. And when it comes to silver knights they also have those dragonslayer arrows..... Black Knights just act as an annoying mini-boss whenever they weren't creative enough to come up with some unique character for that slot.

Crystal Golems - too much health and attack again for their area (maybe it isn't too much since it seems to be a theme), doing 1.5k+ attack damage to anything on narrow slippery platforms is questionable until you are high level.

Basilisks - inflict curse on you. .... Only enemy that does that. Can be very hard to avoid this happening when there are 3 or 4 assaulting you. It's not a good thing to see these in large numebers so..... they give them large numbers.

Mushroom parents - the epitomy of big, fat, slow, and **** it that was a two-hit kill, these things along with their minions just act as one giant freaking road block that kills you in the couple areas where they exist. The literal most threatening enemy in the game that is not featured in the tomb of the giants or catacombs.

So first things first, let me describe Demon's Souls and the differences.


There is an ancient land known as Boletaria. It has been covered by an evil fog. And within it lurks .... something. Or some things. Many famous adventurers have gone in in search of fame and fortune. But... none have returned.

Enter YOU. You are another adventurer in search of glory. You want to be the one who stops the everexpanding fog and saves humanity. You .... you want the power rumored to lurk within the fog. You see, for some unknown reason even though no one ever comes back, people somehow know that demons are in there and their souls give power to the ones who defeat them.

You start in the tutorial world. And it's pretty. And.... your first job is to die. Technically your first job is to go through the level and beat the boss..... but no. Not really. Your first job is to die. You see, if you never make it to the boss, they don't care. You'll just go to the next level the first time you die. And the boss? Well it's meant to kill you. As in one hit kills you. Now to Jack's credit I got it down to 1/10th of its health with my Dark Souls skills before BAM. One hit kill. No warning. One misstep and the club kills me.

What happens if you kill it...... well I only know this from Wiki's. But apparently they give you a fancy weapon as a consolation prize and.... they spawn you in a room with another boss that will DEFINITELY kill you. You see. You get to face a suped up version of the boss from world 2-4. And not the cute and cuddly most likely last boss before the final one you face later in the game. No. A suped up version of THAT. They really want you to die. And no. There is not even a fight. A cutscene ensues in which the guy punches you and you die. That's how hard that boss is.



Okay. So you died. Whether or not you made it to the vanguard or even the dragon god does not matter. You still died. So. So. You are now in the Nexus. Isn't it pretty? And..... you can't do anything here yet other than talk to the merchants whose stuff you can't afford to buy. But while Jack is discussing the Nexus Jack will actually discuss the Nexus. After you beat the first real level, the Maiden in Black appears and asks you to talk to the Monumental. And ....... this is the most frustrating searching thing I've ever done in a hub world. Dude is really well hidden. Anyways, you talk to him, and then the whole thing opens up. For Jack's purposes and the purposes of this review, the top floor has the leaderboards for stats and such. The bottom floor has 5 archstones on 3 levels. World 1 is bottom left, World 2 is middle left, World 3 is top left, top right is broken and you can't use it, World 4 is middle right, and World 5 is bottom right. In front of world 1 is the storeroom guy and the basic merchant. In front of world 5 on the other side of the stone is the magic tutor. Wandering around is the Maiden in Black. After you beat World 1-1, you can talk to her and give her souls to level up.

Major Differences from Dark Souls

1. There are no bonfires. Instead, there are archstones at the beginning of each level and where each boss died. You can warp to any of them from the Nexus. If you need to do anything you would have done at a bonfire in Dark Souls, you do it in the Nexus instead. It's a pretty basic hub world. And it literally does everything a bonfire did in the last game. If you haven't played Dark Souls and that means nothing to you, this is the place where you spend money to level up, buy basic items, do basic upgrades, learn basic spells, and basically anything you would expect from a hub they don't want you to abuse for high level items.

2. There are no Estus Flasks. Instead, you have Grass. More specifically, you have Crescent moon, Half Moon, late moon, Full Moon, new moon, and dark moon grass that restore 120, 240, 400, 600, 100%, and 100% + remove status conditions of your health. This system allows for wild highs and lows that the Estus system does not.

3. The worlds don't really affect each other. You may need certain items to be able to survive in one spot or another, but the actual events in World 1 will never affect the events in World 5.

4. There is a world tendency system. Each world has a world tendency ranging from pure black to pure white. Different events darken or lighten the tendency of that world, and different interesting things happen in each world based on your world tendency in it. As well as the darker the world tendency gets, the harder the enemies are. In your first playthrough you will most likely see very close to neutral world tendency throughout, unless you are really freaking good or purposely trying to alter it.

5. Instead of limited casts per spell, you now have a magic meter that affects how many casts you can have and each spell has a casting cost. Fresh spice and Old Spice restore your magic gauge, and these consumable items, like grass, can allow for wild highs and lows in use that the dark souls system wouldn't allow.

6. It is much farther between save spots (where you gain some permanant progress, such as through beating a boss or a shortcut) in Demon's Souls due to the lack of bonfires.

7. NPC's just do a lot more in the game in Demon's Souls. They wander around and actually have their own agendas and..... yeah.

8. If someone recommends your message, you get your health restored. This has led to an epidemic of "I am in trouble - please recommend this message" messages all over the place, and it is so ingrained in the system and so overdone now that A) these messages get 100s of upvotes and B) it's leaked into Dark Souls. Did you ever see a "Need Humanity" message in Dark Souls? That's because of this. Because people didn't bother to learn that this didn't work in that game, and something confused them enough that they seem to think it does, so people leave messages all over Dark Souls trying to get health and/or humanity out of it. Other than this..... the messages are just used to troll other people. Good messages are so rare that I didn't really bother to read them that much after about 5 hours in.

9. The upgrading system is also fairly different and... slightly confusing with a lot more souls required to get a good weapon. Your armor also can't be upgraded at all.

10. Dual Wielding weapons actually has advantages. Long story short, it changes a few things that lead to higher damage output.

11. Your hollowed (or 'soul' form) gives you permanant half health until you kill a boss or use a rare consumable item to become human again. However an early ring, the "Cling Ring", will make this about 75% of your health and thus kind of bearable.




So....... onward with this first impressions thing. I will describe how far I have gotten in each level and what I did and did not like.


World 1-1: Boletarian Palace

So you start on a bridge. And a dragon flies overhead. And you have to assault that castle. Great. Just great. One man army assaulting a castle.

So first things first, how to make permanant progress. If you can get to the top and open up a side tunnel and survive against the creatures inside, you can open up the gate to the side of the castle doors. This lets you use this as a minor shortcut that is only slightly easier but much shorter than the main route up here.

If you manage to get to the very very top of the castle, you can open up a second such shortcut with much harder enemies on your way down.

And finally, in the middle of the first shortcut there is a chain you can cut. This lets you open the gates at the top of the castle right next to the second shortcut (making the second shortcut really just a shortcut up to an optional boss).

Speaking of, there is an optional boss you can kill that doesn't respawn. Yay? It's a dragon. Double yay? And it killed me the only time I went over there so badly that I haven't gone back yet. Triple yay?

Okay. Other major points of interest are the stairs where they roll a boulder down upon your head (hard to avoid and a possible cheap death), a room of explosive barrels where the dude throws a firebomb in as soon as you get near, and a semi-long bridge that periodically gets assailed by dragon fire until said time that you beat the level.

The actual enemies themselves are just your basic sword and shieldwearing thugs, a zombie with a torch, some tougher thugs with shields, blue eyed knights, and a singleton red eye knight guarding a door you don't have the key for yet. The blue eyed knights show up multiple times and at this stage in the game they are your hardest enemy. They are skilled at timing blocks and strikes to get through your guard, and.... basically its the enemy that forces you to learn how to fight well. The Red Eye Knight..... well Jack has killed him. But it took magic. Lots and lots of magic. There are also some phalanx enemies weak to fire. They are basically a blob that can't turn around fast and can only take large amounts of damage from behind.

This is a good time to point out that each area has its own especially tough enemy. The larger the world number, the earlier and in greater numbers they force you to deal with them. In world 1 it's the red eye knight and you don't have to deal with this killing machine (he can literally one shot you or if not two shot you before you can put up much of a fight) until the 3rd level. Be warned, red eyed knights will occassionally spam healing items if left alone, and you don't really have the luxury of allowing that to happen. The one I fought was that tough.

Okay. So you manage to open the main gate. You may even have challenged and lost to a red eye or dragon or both. Anyways, the main boss fog shows up after the gate, and your archstone is within a 1 minute run of this boss fog. Because of this... well it's the easiest boss in the game. Just because you don't have to use resources on the way there that could be better used against the boss.

Once you get there, you will fight THE phalanx. It's a big freaking blob with smaller phalanx enemies swarming all over it. Defending it. Making it really freaking hard to get close enough to the boss to do any damage and making arrows worthless. And it's always making more.

There are two ways to do this fight. 1) Spam Fire Magic or firebombs (firebombs normally only gives you one attempt and you still need to do some melee). Or 2) Do the long grindy melee fight. If you didn't luck out and have some fire magic until now (only a couple classes can get it at this point), you really are just in for a long grindy fight that is more of an endurance and healing item affair than anything else.


Once you beat it you get to rest, get the boss's soul, and get to finally access all of the Nexus. You also get to continue on to world 1-2.

World 1-2 is basically a below and aboveground battlefield which is just one long bridge. There are the same soldiers around and a singleton blue eye knight annoyingly guarding the boss fog. In the middle you will have to go underground once to fight an aggro dog pack. Prior to this is a dark room with phalanx enemies in it (the small ones) followed by a long run where you try not to insta-die to dragon fire raining down on the bridge. After the dark tunnel is a second, more stressful dragon fire run with a lot more tough enemies sitting at the end of the bridge. Basically...... the level is short. Relatively short. Anyways...... once you get to the boss fog, you get to challenge the tower knight. But be warned, there are no shortcuts in this level. If you have a bow and enough arrows you may be able to kill the dragon with good aim and make some progress that way, but the dragon actually kills more enemies than it does you once you know the safe spots.

The tower knight..... he is basically the iron golem fight from Dark Souls described above. Big. Slow. But severely damaging at this point in the game and a few archers are standing in the only safe-ish spot at the beginning of the fight. Oh and he knows something that is effectively Soul Spear. If you try to do ranged combat, a giant usually one hit kill soul spear will hit you in the back (or front) if you are not careful. Jack has not killed this boss yet... so moving on.

World 2-1: Stonefang Tunnel. Basically..... you are moving through a mine. Halfway through you can unlock an elevator that serves as a midway point and which also unlocks a slightly better blacksmith than the one in the Nexus. Much deeper in, you hit a switch that opens another path wihtin distance of the elevator that means you only have to kill 3 flaming sword miners and a few pickaxe miners to get to the boss.

BTW, there are flaming sword miners and pickaxe miners. They act like enemies from world 1-1 but do more damage, and they are weak to magic while being very strong against physical attacks. There are also very dangerous dogs running around here like the dogs from world 1-2. And there are flaming lizards that drop down from on high and are immune to physical and fire attacks. And there are pyromaniacs who can't be stunned by your attacks. There are also miners that do nothing but launch highly damaging rocks at you. And to top it all off there is the boss.

The unstunnable pyromaniacs that do and take tons of damage are the especially tough enemies here.

The boss is the armored Spider. Basically you start in a tunnel. And the boss alternates between throwing webs (do some damage and severely slow you) and fireballs (major damage) down the tunnel. And there are a couple safe spots on the sides of the tunnel at the beginning.

There are two strategies. 1) Run like an idiot and try to get into melee range before the fire and webs kill you. Then try to deal with the boss's severe melee attacks while realizing you will never be able to get behind the boss.

2) Stand where the webs can get you but the fire can't, heal every time you need to, and just shoot the boss with arrows.

Jack went with B). It was not the intent of the fight, but I really hated this boss after trying to do it the intended way.


I was so sick of this level temporarily after that that I did not explore more.


World 3-1: Tower of Latria

It's one big giant freaking prison. You make permanant progress by not having to go back to some of the floors after you grab a certain item (usually a key) or flip a certain switch. You start on world 3.

Notably, one of the enemies, the prisoners, are something you will not have to fight nearly as often if you never open their cells. But opening a cell is an irreversible decision. So there are 2 questions to be asked. A) How often do you plan to come back here? B) How much do you want that shiny loot? Anyways, there is also a prisoner horde enemy on the first floor that is.... well technically its one of the really tough enemies here but if you don't go into melee range and just hide when it uses the very telegraphed ranged attack that it has to spend multiple seconds charging up (and it won't come closer to you on the first floor)..... then it's just an easy enemy for a bow or magic user.

And then... there are the mind flayers. They have 3 attacks. One is a paralyzing shot that is followed up by a melee range levitation sort of.... it's a one hit kill or close enough depending on your health level. Then they have just the freaking high damage electricity shot that stuns you. And...... they have a close range aoe attack that usually follows a very weak looking punch. That... will take away half your health. These dudes are freaking annoying.

Anyways notable spots are you have to open certain doors with certain keys and flip a certain switch to make an arrow firing death machine stop so you can get closer to the boss. And..... then there's the boss.

I will descibe the boss once I figure out how to beat it reliably. Right now I'll just say I feel it was the inspiration for Pinwheel in Dark Souls but actually hard.



World 4-1 Shrine of Storms.

There are three paths through this level.

1) The longer path that navigates around the Vanguard mini-boss in the middle of the level.

2) The shortcut path on the longer path that is slightly faster and still gets around the mini-boss.

3) Killing the mini-boss and using the tunnel it guards as a shortcut.

Jack took number 3 because he wanted revenge.


Regardless, early on the Vanguard enemy from the tutorial world is sitting there, acting real happy. And you have the option to fight it or go around. Jack elected to kick it's *** because as stated he wanted revenge.

So. I don't know what going around entails. I assume it was fun. All i can describe is the path I took.

So. The route to the boss is guarded by skeletons. There are three varieties. The easy ones. The golden ones with a meat cleaver that are slower and do more damage to compensate. And the red-eyed (Jack senses a theme here) black ones with dual swords that finish fights as soon as they get to melee range but can be stunned every 3rd magic shot just enough that you might kill the thing with enough time and range.

So. The black skeletons are the hard enemy here. But you only ever are forced to deal with one of them in this beginning area. But it's a doozy.

There are also manta rays (freaking hate them) that are jack's least favorite enemy so far, at least for common ones, after the plague rats and the mind flayers. Basically...... they sit outside of melee range and occassionally snipe you in the back of the head for 1/3-1/2 of your health in the middle of all sorts of fun situations. And there are a lot of them. And this was the reason the Vanguard was any challenge at all.

Anyways..... once you finally get to the boss fog you get to fight the adjudicator. It's weakness is its head. You have to A) shoot its weakspot on its head or B) make it bend over by beating the crap out of other parts of it. Now in theory this is a hard fight. You have to fight the boss across 3 floors, going finally down to the bottom one as a melee user and forcing the boss to bend over while beating the crap out of it and/or getting the crap beaten out of you by 1 and 2 hit kills.

OR you can just stand on the top floor in a relative safe spot, with only its tongue to deal with, and take every opportunity you can to snipe it in the head with a soul arrow, back away and heal, and do it again. Either or. It's up to the player. Jack did the second one.

After this boss is another descent. And you enter a room. And you get a cutscene. And you get to fight the reaper. Basically...... if you are good with a bow it's the best early farming spot for souls and if you are a melee character you run up to it as fast as you can and smack it to death. Anyways...... when it dies the rest of the semi-hard enemies in the room that respawn just all.. die. A bow takes 4-6 shots to kill the reaper and if you are fast you can do it from the top of the room, so people use this room to farm 4500 souls every 1.5 minutes.

And past that.... well there is Patches the Hyena. And he tells you to lean over a hole. There is "treasure" down there. And he pushes you in. And after that death I decided to leave this alone for now.


World 5-1: The Valley of Defilement

It's **** Blighttown. That's it. This world is **** blighttown. Plague rats and depraved ones replace Blighttown denizens and blowdar snipers (thankfully in 5-1 it's just one really bad area for the rats). The leeches are replaces by this eggish thing that poisons you. And there are giant depreaved ones htat take and deal a lot of damage that are the replacement for brutes and the hard enemy for this area (you fight two). This is Jack's least favorite area after the prison (I hate mind flayers). And.... it's freaking upper Blighttown for world 5-1 basically. And don't worry. I read ahead out of curiosity. There's the poison swamp in 5-2. They didn't leave it out. And there is even a plague swamp in 5-3. So don't worry. It really is **** Blighttown all over again (or is it before because this game first?). Anyways..... skipping all the rage induced rant parts, this place has no way to gain permanant progress. 4-1 didn't either but you could kill the mini-boss to make it much shorter. This is a long-ass level that literally has no shortcut that Jack knows of. Thus....... for you Dark Souls players, it would be the equivalent of doing upper Blighttown every time you lost to Quelaag. It just sucks. When you get to the very bottom, you get to fight the Leechmonger enemy. Now there are two ways to do this. One, you can try the melee approach while getting poisoned and eaten by leeches. Or you can use a player found sniper spot that the developers didn't really intend to rain down fire upon its head and hope your magic with mp restoration items will last longer than the boss. Because the boss has regenerating health (really freaking sucks as a melee character).



Anyways.... I stopped playing this level after I found the poison swamp and am working on 1-2 and 3-1.

As mentioned previously, world 3-1 is a giant prison. In these halls roam the Mind Flayers.

So. My real attempt at this started last night at about 11 PM. I was not very awake. And the Mind Flayers kicked my ***. Even with my better equipment, they can still do the 2 shot crap. The trick is that I can now do enough damage to stun and kill them in one combo as well. So .... each mind flayer was a toss up kind of. Once I finally got past this barrage, I was able to turn off the arrow hall for a shortcut (a very deadly trap designed to be a shortcut and that's it), and proceed onwards. From this vantage point, there are three things left that mattered. One. I had to climb up both sides of the church, find the reviver, and kill him. The dude is real pitiable and claims not to be any threat to you and asks you to spare him. However, he is the most dangerous enemy in the entire area. You see..... this dude infinitely revives the boss so that she cannot be finished off. Until you come up here and kill him. Ever finish off a boss battle and the boss just comes back to life and the door opens asking you to retreat? That's what will happen.

After killing him, you get to climb up the long road leading to this gothic demonic looking church. Inside there are some prisoners worshipping the boss. And... if you don't get to close you can kill off any dreglings that would attack you without aggroing the boss.

Jack started this fight by trying to cheese the boss. Just because I did not want to deal with 4 or 5 mind flayers again. Those guys are unbelievably annoying. Anyways, the trick is to hide behind the last pillar. Step out. Fire 1 arrow. No more, no less. Than hide until she shoots a spell at you. Then rinse and repeat. Sounds simple right? Well apparently Jack can't handle this. Jack accidentally fired 2 arrows while the boss was at 80% health. So. No cheesing the boss. OK. Real boss fight begins.

She summons 4 copies of herself. From here on in, my arrows will do much more damage. It will only take like 20 to kill her. But..... there are 5 of her. And they are all throwing fireballs at me. And I've killed too many dreglings to use them as a clue (they only worship the real one). So. Game plan. Hmmm..... Run around like a maniac until I can find a pillar where none of them can see me. Never run into the middle of the area because of the dozens of trap panels that stun you and let her kill you. And..... step out, fire 1 arrow, rinse and repeat. Repeat a lot and the boss was dead. Easy. This was an actual legitimate non-cheesy win too, making this the easiest of the first 5 areas to actually beat the actual boss in.

So a review. The phalanx has tons of little shieldy minions that aggro the **** out of you and make damaging the boss at all a huge patience and health item grind without fire damage going for you. On the first level you HAVE TO beat first. The adjudicator has the giant axe that beats the crap out of you when you dare to step down from the upper level. And on the upper level he can still get cheap kills against the careless player. The iron spider traps you in a little tunnel and if you dare to get any closer uses fire and sharp-*** melee attack pincer..... things to make you run back scared into the tunnel. And the Leechmonger....... dude has regenerating health and does tons of damage and is very very nasty to melee. Ranged.... the regenerating health makes most ranged combat impossible unless you know exactly where to stand.

Each of those bosses was hard the legitimate way. To the point where I cheesed the 3 non-phalanx ones. Fool's Idol...... this lady was extremely easy the legitimate way. If you ever need to pick an actual boss to do second and you have some ranged attack going for you and you do mind cheesing, come do this one after phalanx.

Anyways, you kill the boss. And unlike the rest of them no archstone appears. WTF? So you walk up to the altar looking for it. And 3 gargoyles kidnap you and take you to another area in a cutscene. And..... you don't get the choice to go back to 3-1 from 3-2, making several things Jack forgot to do significantly more of a pain in the *** in hindsight. Oh well. You walk up the winding stairs of this tower, trying not to fall into the pit you came from, until you reach the archstone. Then you activate it. Get the boss's soul of course. Then you step outside. And..... this area floored me. The view was so good that it made all the trouble worth it. It's ..... Jack will need some time and another post's worth of thought to come up with an adequate description. That being said Jack had started reading ahead at this point for non Blighttown-esqe areas and did not want to fight the Maneater boss yet. So off to the Nexus.

Not the official name. Just a nickname of Jack's. Each area after the first is just named after the previous boss's archstone. But since Phalanx Archstone is a crap name for any area, Jack names these himself.

Anyways....... run run run across the bridge trying not to let the dragon kill you. Then run run run up the stairs against the tower knight boss trying to kill that one archer in your way while not taking a 1 hit kill soul spear in the back. Then just sit on the ramparts where the boss can't hit you and pick your shots well to arrow him to death.

That's the ranged method in a nutshell. If you aren't a melee character, this is the only way to fight this boss. If you are melee character.... there are FREAKING ARCHERS firing at you from multiple areas that people on said ramparts will be able to safely ignore. Again, another thing that makes me think pure melee characters get a raw deal in this game. Luckily Jack is a Triple Threat with bow, magic, and melee. Anyways...... the boss died.

Then I tried to go on to 1-3. To at least see it. And the fog tells me I have to kill an archdemon to continue. ........ Real great. Real class game. Arbitrary task to go do. One question. What is an archdemon?

So 4-1 is fought on the outskirts of this stormy mountain. It's known as the shrine of storms. These black skeletons literally dodge roll towards you (in 4:2 I used that to trick a couple off of a cliff) and beat the everliving snot out of anyone without adequate stamina to shield against this.

4:2 is different. You start descending into the mountain, fighting reapers and shadowlurkers as well as more skeletons.

So. You start at the last archstone. Poor adjudicator. And you go down. And ..... you meet your first reaper. And then Jack kills it with a bow and all of the shadowlurkers it summons vanish.

So, a bit about reapers and shadowlurkers. A few important things to know. 1) Reapers are very squishy but also weirdly fierce as well at melee range. It's only slightly easier than a mind flayer as in they take 2 hits to kill you and Jack could still one combo kill at this point. But they summon shadowlurkers far before you meet them. 2) They summon shadowlurkers, and the shadowlurkers spawn infinitely (or respawn) until you kill them, at which point all the shadowlurkers die and give you their soul rewards along with that of the reaper. Making the first reaper a 4500 soul farming spot for bow users and the whole level a .... I think I had 36k souls by the time I was done with the whole level? including the boss but still.... that's very high compared to all previous levels.

Anyways....... there are 3 kinds of shadowlurker. Blue and purple ones are summoned by reapers. Blue ones are mostly harmless..... while the purple ones stand in the middle of the path blockign it and can easily kill you 1v1 without much effort at all. AND FREAKING RESPAWN. They are worse than the red skeletons because of this freaking eye-beam that takes out 2/3 of your health and is a ranged attack on narrow pathways and tunnels as you descend into the heart of the mountain.

And then there are the female shadowlurkers. Only 3 of them exist. They only spawn when you pick up their trap items (but always spawn after that). You can hear them giggling in the background in these dark areas as you run. And .... they are invisible. And their backstab will otk you. No healing after that. And.... I just ran past the only one I was stupid enough to activate and never actually had it catch up to me.

There are also 3 normal skeletons and 2 golden skeletons on the main path down, just to slow you down so the storm beasts can take a few pot shots at you at their leisure. I don't like the stormbeasts here either. Anyways, once you get to the bottom the last real obstacle is this bridge mukky area. If you fall in you have to deal with these weird slug ..... things and backtrack to the beginning of the large room. If you don't ... well the narrow bridges have proximity mine enemies flying around them so run fast and you may or may not get exploded upon. After that.... it's the boss.



A word of advice. 1v1 this boss. Not only will he have more health the more co-op players involved, but co-op players universally make this guy harder. They are really good for getting down here. But then they just piss off the boss unneedfully because randoms on the internet are not smart enough to learn why the boss is not attacking that one area AND THEN LURE him to that area. Getting Jack killed.

So the trek down here through the caves took 5 attempts by myself? Because I was low on items. But then my first attempt without co-op help I just won. You see..... the boss is this giant dude. And he hits very very hard. I know because co-op people got me killed on my first try.

But he's blind. He has to navigate by sound. And there are areas of the room where he never goes. If you stay in those areas and only shoot him when he's far away and DON'T HAVE A CO-OP PARTNER ATTACKING LIKE A ...... the boss is very easy. You need the thief's ring, which is a very easy to obtain item in 1-1, to do this. But it's very very easy to go get it and this works like a charm once you have. And... even if you don't have the thief's ring it's just a matter of being as quiet as you can, never running, and the boss will still have a hard time catching you. And even if you piss him off the old fashioned way (I know from experience), he is no harder than SIF from Dark Souls. So... Jack shot him to death with arrows + magic + thief's ring. Moving on...

So I know you just literally descended the entire last level. Which is why this is spatially confusing to Jack. Because as far as I can tell, you are in a very stormy area that looks to be if not the top then at least very freaking high up on some sort of mountain. Was that temple in 4-1 with the very large wide flat areas really the top of the mountain and we just never realized it?

Anyways...... REVENGE. SWEET SWEET REVENGE. The only enemies in this area are the storm beasts and the storm king boss. Which is a giant storm beast. REVENGE.

Okay. Step 1: Run like a madman to where all the storm beasts are congregating and grab the stormruler sword.

Step 2: Run to the safe spot in the house very far away, heal up from very near death, and equip the stormruler sword.

So. This is both the coolest and most useless sword in the game.

Anywhere else, it does very little damage and only has 10 durability and doesn't do much other than knock people down. But knocking them down lets you heal or switch to something more useful or position yourself better or.... it's not worth it. It just isn't.

Okay. But in 4-3, it has a unique ability that it has nowhere else. It can throw a thunderclap of air with every swing. Freaking Awesome.

Do I really need to explain how you fight the storm beasts and their king with a sword that throws thunderclaps at them from a spot where they can hit you but not enough to kill you in one go? You get sweet sweet revenge for all those potshots in the back of the head. That is what happens.

Anyways... so the storm king died on the first try. Although getting the sword made it very close to my 2nd try. And when he dies... a message plays. "You have slain an archdemon. The fog will no longer hinder you." Or something. So. I can go to 1-3 now. Yay. Moving on.........

So. You enter this area. And you have two choices. You can a) go left and deal with proximity mines and who knows what else because Jack was not willing to go that way after the first mine until he had fully explored the other route. Or B) you can go right. Jack went right.

What follows is a 3 step process.

1) Run like mad through the tunnel ignoring all the miners who won't hit you if you don't stop.

2) Drop off of wooden platforms, taking minor damage all the way down a very large mineshaft that reminds Jack of the descent into... something not pleasant.

3) Get mauled by 3 lava wurms at the bottom. On the 2nd try fall in a more advantageous spot, run past them, and heal up in front of what is surprisingly already the boss fog.

You can see why I haven't screwed with the proximity mines yet.

So. The boss. Took me 3 attempts. Because the first time I didn't know how to beat him, the second time I realized my steel shield could block most of his crap with only minor damage as long as he did not break my guard. And on my 3rd attempt I managed to kill him without him breaking my guard.

So. It's some sort of bull flame demon that is both bipedal and can get down on all 4's if it wants. It likes to jump in the air and smack you. Or just smack you in general. And it's on freaking fire and can make explosions. And it's weak to soul arrows. What followed is the first legiitmate melee style fight in which I went toe to toe in a boss fight where I had forgotten how satisfying this was. On my 3rd attempt at the boss, I legitimately killed him and got to celebrate a really fun fight with a run down here that was..... well not that bad. Then...... I went onward into the ceremonial hall behind this boneyard (you fight him in an area with a few giant ribcages).

First of all, this like 4-3 is just a boss right off.

Second.......

Wow. That is one really freaking big really freaking menacing looking dragon.

This fight consistes of you trying to run to two ballista while the boss tries to smash you to pieces every time it sees you. And you know it saw you because it's eyes turn red from their neutral yellow. And warning..... you can only hide so much. All the while, you have to break rubble that is literally just there to slow you down enough that you have trouble hiding from the boss. Each ballistae will pin one of the bosses wings to the ground. Once you've finished the two ballistae parts, the boss will be pinned to the ground.

You can A) walk up to it and try to dodge its breath as you melee it to death. Or B) just shoot it in the head a dozen times and watch it die from a very very close but still safe distance. I chose B), and thus the second archdemon was dead.