There is no way to mentor some people straight out of the gate. That's the point. There is not a way for anyone to learn anything from a fight if no one got to fight the boss.

And this isn't some fanciful exaggeration. It is common enough to be relevant for a boss fight to last 10 seconds past the boss fog before the host is dead and it's over. It is even common enough to be relevant for Jack to not get through the boss fog before the situation is irrecoverably FUBAR. I've had about 11X successful boss runs out of about 250? A quarter of the unsuccessful ones end within 20 seconds, and another third end before the first minute.

Sounds like you need to pick option two then.

A part of why Jacks mentality is ridiculous is because the AI attack patterns on each boss arent a use x, then y, then z. They pick them based on how they think its going to work. I've encountered a boss many times who is only using attack x and y in my first attempt, then in a co-op session, had the fight end seconds in because they final used attack z and I just got totally blindsided by something I had never seen before. And Im great at the game.

In fact in any other game, I would maybe even give him a little stumbling room with this theory of his. But in Dark Souls, things can be going according to plan 100% in one moment, and you're totally dead the next moment by something you were unfamiliar with, or just got unlucky.

If you dont like the idea of sometimes joining a match which is over in moments mjack, my answer is short - Dont put your summon stone down. You're playing Dark Souls. Runs ending abruptly is a huge part of the game, and the mentality you're selling here - Dont try unless you've tried by yourself and are good - is ridiculous. Hell, there are many bosses where passing through the fog door, you have to make a split second decision about rolling, and the timing means that if you're wrong in the direction you chose, the fight is already over.

No matter how many times I read through what you're saying, the end message still remains horrible - If you summon me without being on my level, you're wasting my time. I dont want to join your game if you're going to die.

And as for your 'humanity is limited, practice by yourself' notion. Humanity is LIMITED. Each death LOWERS YOUR TOTAL HEALTH. Lots of people are just racing into that encounter with a phantom because they dont have the humanity to spend throwing themselves at the boss alone trying to learn things, so they called a friend. Maybe they except that friend to do all the work, maybe they just want the seconds respite and split attention to watch and learn. And if you even for a second think of entertaining replying with 'dont use your humanity when you're trying to learn', that creates a terrible learning curve. With that lowered health, you now cant get hit at all, so you have zero error for margin, while attempting to learn. But ahhh, now we're touching onto the real intent here arent we? If you encourage people to throw themselves at it in a state where they cant take any hits at all, they have to learn to never get hit at all. You're quietly selling the 'get gud' mantra.

But jacks 'success' numbers actually paint the clearest picture of all: Dark Souls bosses can be hard. The fight can rapidly go from 'I think I can block this' or 'Ive worked out his pattern' to 'He hit me once and now Im ****.' Its highly entertaining to see jack attempt to use those numbers to sell why he's right, when they actually sell the real truth: To the most common builds used in DS, you get 1-3 hits from a boss before your health is totally gone, or bad enough the situation is irrecoverable.

You at least saw attacks X and Y and have some idea of what they do though right?

You have the health to take at least 3 hits from most bosses. Things cannot go completely bad that fast unless you are playing extremely poorly.

The Ring of Binding, when equipped, sets your minimum health to 75%. You can literally equip and then unequip it and just rest at a bonfire. You never even have to dedicate a slot to it, and it ignores whether or not your missing health is due to curse. Because of this, there is no reason your minimum health should ever be below 75%. Ever. And then because of this the above point still applies. That is what I would consider a comfortable margin of error, at least for Dark Souls, since most attacks from bosses take about a 3rd of your health and 75% > 2/3. Attacks that do more are so well telegraphed that you will learn when to expect them and the margin of error isn't needed to learn something.

And since they came up, let's look at my numbers again.

1/4 of my fights that fail are over in 20 seconds. This means someone at full health took 3 hits in 20 seconds. Bosses are not even designed to hit that fast. There is not a single boss in the game with a one hit combo that multi-hits more than 2 times. Any attacks that does more than the standard 3rd are so slow that they aren't really good enough to kill someone at full health either. With the 2 phantoms there, people should be able to back off. In fact, you have to take a considerable hit from the boss AND THEN continue to try to attack it to even have the chance to die that fast. Where exactly is the learning opportunity during that? It's one of those things where bar stupid crap with lava (which does happen), you have to almost be actively ignoring the bosses attacks completely and just letting them hit you.

And this all comes back to the idea that you don't have to be able to beat the boss when summoning phantoms. But you should at least be able to make an attempt at it. If you are so bad at the fight that people aren't even able to begin to battle the boss before you die, you need to practice a little as a hollow. If that means you are practicing against a boss with 75% of your health, so be it.

BTW, stop the "don't try unless you have tried by yourself and are good" stuff. All you are doing with this is ignoring what I am saying. Period. I no longer believe you are arguing against what I am saying with these things. It is just trying to to argue against words you are directly putting in my mouth instead of what I am typing.

You do not have to be good at the fight. I have said this many times by now. I have even said that you can suck and literally do none of the work. You can let the 2 people you summon do everything for you and carry you throughout the entire fight. You can be that bad at this game. All I have said is that you need to be able to survive. If that means staying on the opposite side of the arena, never approaching the boss, and just observing, then learn how to do so. If you cannot at least survive long enough to get away from the boss and just run away for the whole fight, again, you are never going to win that way.

Somehow some way, you have to at least have the chance to not die immediately. If attack z blindsides you, then you learn from it for your next attempt. But if attack z blindsides you for the 10th time in a row and this always results in your death right after the battle starts, you need to learn why attack z is blindsiding you. At least enough so that you can use the circle button or whatever the run away equivalent is on your platform to not get killed every time the boss does it.

I said 1 - 3, not 3. Most decent bosses leave me (a typical light build, very common) on 10-30% health. And god forbid you misjudge an attack. Some bosses can be blocked with a shield, some have to be dodged. You make the wrong judgement to block when it should have been dodge? You're probably dead, the 'not that fast follow up' is suddenly more than fast enough while you stumble like a drunken idiot with no stamina.

Not to mention lots of the nasty bosses use 3 hit combos, so no idea what you're talking about.

You have repeatedly said 'Dont try if you're going to waste my time by trying'. You can pretend that isnt 'get gud', but it is.

In this conversation, I have repeatedly said it is okay to be bad at a fight. But you are wasting people's time if you can't survive long enough versus the boss for anything useful to come out of it at all. That no matter what you do, if your summoned phantoms don't get to fight the boss because you are dying that fast, then you need to practice as a hollow before repeatedly using human effigies to summon people.

I believe this point is not getting across. So. Do you disagree with this? I think you do so why do you disagree with this if you do? Let's stop talking past each other for a second and talk about the point that has been in contention, at least on my side, for the last 3 posts.




I am at 15 vigor and wearing a wanderer's set + 3. Late game bosses, not early game but end-game bosses, cannot one combo kill me under any circumstance, and I can normally take 3 hits at 75% health. Even scaling that down severely and accounting for my high intelligence and dexterity, I don't see how people are repeatedly dying to single combos at 100% health. 15 vigor is only about 100-150 extra health, my armor set is ****, and so is my physical defense. It just... even bosses like the smelter demon should not be able to one combo kill you. I can see dying fast if you have really really poor stats, but the sheer amount of underleveled you would have to be to get hammered that badly is just..... it should take at least 2 combos.

I do disagree with this.

Particularly because unless you're actively trying, you dont see the same phantoms. That player who walked into the boss fight and died before you got through the wall could have done the fight a dozen times, learned it all, be particularly adept at it....and then had a stroke of bad luck/poor timing/goof moment, and be immediately dead.

You move on, and join another player, muttering about how that guy shouldnt have wasted your time if he was so hopeless.

See how totally pointless and irrelevant that is? You're making snap judgements on anyone who makes a mistake, and wastes YOUR time. Not your humanity. Not your equipment, not anything. Heck, you risked nothing as a phantom. If I want to summon help for a boss I dont know, I will. If I want to summon 2 phantoms and then have them watch me leap off a cliff 7 times in a row, I will. If you think its a waste of YOUR time, stop putting down your mark. Putting your mark on the ground and complaining about the quality of player summoning you and wasting your time, is what we're doing here.

Also are we talking about the first or second game? First game, you make sense about your ability to take hits. Second game, you do not.

I don't know if it's my bad luck or not, but I seem to have bad luck connecting to other people on ps3. I tend to see the same people 3 or 4 times in a row on a very regular basis. I'm not judging people I see once and then move on. I'm judging people who've died every time they have summoned me until I start using the Black Separation Crystal.


I am playing on the second game. Give me a second to check my actual stats.


Edit: Between my stats and equipment, I have about 300 physical defense and about 200 in each of the 4 magic categories. Each defense point reduces your damage taken by .2 per point, meaning I take about 60 less damage from each physical attack.

Edit: It seems it's .11% per resistant point, so 200 * .11 is 22%. I take 1/5 less magic damage.

If I go piss off a Ruin Sentinel, it takes 4 hits to die at 90% health. We can be generous and say that this would be 3 hits at 75% health if i never attempted to block. I know very well from experience that the same can be said of quite a few other bosses as well.

Yeah. That's about what I expected. It would take every boss I've seen on New Game at least 3 or 4 hits to kill me at about where I am in the game right now. Even bosses in new game plus (my soul memory has gotten to the point where I am getting summoned into that now) still take 3 hits. Unless there is a huge spike in the Dragon Areas that makes them harder than the Smelter Demon from NG+, I'm not that concerned. I'm a little concerned about the DLC. I mean, Manus was a thing.

Hah.

Talks about how you can get hit by 'end game bosses'.

Uses Ruin Sentinel as your baseline.

I fought a boss last night, with a co-op phantom and a co-op NPC. It dealt 1030dmg to me and the other player, per hit (Much less to the NPC, who we happily let facetank it). That was about 75-80% of our health. For a single hit. Of any kind. Even with your defense, thats what 940dmg per hit? Apparently you can take 3-4 of those? Okay.

What NG are you on?

My baseline includes the Ruin Sentinels, Freya, the rotten, scorpioness najka, the looking glass knight, vendrick, the smelter demon, the other guy from undead crypt, the old iron king, the pursuer, and a couple other people I am sure I have missed. I haven't bothered with pissing off some dragons that much yet, but there's that and the final boss before I get to the dlc.

This would be the "I know it's about the same for other bosses" thing. If you are taking 1000 damage per hit from bosses, either you aren't on NG and are applying standards way down the road, or I simply don't get it.

And if you are applying NG++ or even further standards to this, then I'm sorry I can't compare yet.


Edit:

Oh. Also this.



I typed this. Obviously my baseline includes things other than the Ruin Sentinels.

Edit2: It seems I might have to worry about the Ancient Dragon. However it's 100% optional.

I decline to answer the numbers game, because numbers games are always just used to discredit things in one direction or another. Either, 'oh your number is lower than mine, so your input is null' or 'Well that experience is so far beyond my scope, that its irrelevant information.'

My stance remains that co-op is a great learning tool. People are bad. Lots of them will fail many times in a row, with seemingly no progress, even while using a learning tool. Getting mad or discouraging people from using everything they have at their disposal because it mildly inconveniences you, is not a stance I will ever agree with.

Except what playthrough you are on does matter. If you are on New Game +, you have seen this all before and should have some idea of what to do. If you are on New Game ++, you have even less of an excuse than someone on New Game +. New Game + has SOME new stuff to throw at you during certain boss fights. In New Game ++, you've been through everything twice and even know the differences by now.

If we are talking about people on New Game, they should be able to take enough of a hit that they don't die in one combo. If they are frequently dying very very soon after the boss fight starts, then they need to practice and learn the battle at least enough not to die right away. Even if it's just running away and letting their summoned help deal with it while they watch.

If we are talking about New Game +++ or whatever, they should have some idea of what the combo entails and the whole "learning how to fight the boss" is mostly irrelevant.

So if you are going to make a MAJOR POINT out of how much damage people can take AND couple it with the fact that people use co-op to learn boss fights, what playthrough they are on is directly relevant. I have been basing my whole argument on what I would expect from people in NG and NG+. There is an entirely different set of arguments and factors that must be considered for people on NG++++++ or even just NG++.

Not everyone plays non-stop.

I recently started a newgame in the first Dark Souls. I had rough overall knowledge, but needed to re-learn A LOT of the attack patterns, because its been a long time since I sat down and played. NewGame status does not automatically mean they're coming straight from another play, fully equipped with everything they need to know.

Hell, even the match I had last night took me through a bunch of teething issues because I hadnt played a game on my 360 in about a month. You're attributing false personas and capabilities to people based on a number which never ever goes away.

You don't suddenly forget how to do everything because you've left the game for a while. You might be a little rusty. You might need to get into practice again. But the fact that you've done everything before, even if it was a while ago, means you have an innate advantage over someone on New Game. EXPERIENCE. You have done this all before, and even if you are rusty you have not completely lost the skills that got you to a 2nd or 3rd or a freaking fourth playthrough. You should have the basic skills needed to do at least okay if not perfectly, since all I am really asking for is the common sense to back off if you are about to die so that you don't.

Especially since we are talking about a game like Dark Souls II that takes about 50-100 hours to go through for a lot of people that came out only 5 months ago. I highly doubt someone who has played Dark Souls II for 200 hours in a little less then 5 months has forgotten everything important about the game.

And frankly? If someone is on their 5th playthrough or higher I don't even buy severe rustiness in that short of a time span. Assuming they are on consoles. On pc it's only been 4 months.

At this point you're more or less drumming down to saying 'Well my experience is x, so therefore...'

People forget things jack. I have entire games in my library which I would like to revisit, but whenever I do I have zero idea what Im doing, why Im doing it, or where I should be going. So I dont end up making any progress when I revisit them. The idea that anyone who has played a game, will retain that information forever no matter what is silly.

I know for certain that there are several bosses across both Dark Souls games which I had a combination of dumb luck and co-op help every time I fought them, and I still have no idea what the hell Im doing, because it was done and dusted so fast that I never really took anything in.

Demon's Souls: Valley of Defilement Area 2

I've made another run at this recently for about 25 minutes, so I wanted to comment a little on why this area is one of my least favorite in any souls game. The only reason I have had more trouble with Black Gulch is that Black Gulch was still accessible to the point where I tried it (I even went back there tonight for non - The Rotten reasons). The Gutter and Black Gulch were the 3 worst hours of my Dark Souls career so far because I bothered to actually put in the time to do them.

I have spent a cumulative 75 minutes on this area, and I have yet to see any sort of progress from it.

The Valley of Defilement is infamous for being the predecessor to areas such as Blighttown and The Gutter. The upper area, as stated somewhere else on this thread fairly early on, was just an unfair poison area with oddly hardy smaller enemies and one of the toughest bigger enemies in the game. Once you finally get to it the Leechmonger is a severe pain to kill without ranged cheesing involved.



Area 2 makes that look like a cute kitten. You start on relatively dry land near the entrance to this second area. You access this by going through a small canyon from where the Leechmonger Stone is. You go down and you enter the water and....... at some point you will realize this swamp can poison you. And this swamp is so big that it completely dwarfs the Blighttown swamp to the point of there isn't even a comparison required. It's really freaking big. And the only path forward appears to be island hopping. The area is so dark that you can't really see anything more than 30 feet away from you. So it's not as bad as Tomb or The Gutter but it's one of those things where you will not navigate to the area you want to be by spying it in the distance. While you can move around in the swamp as much as you want, there seem to be obstacles all over the place to prevent you from making any real shortcuts that I can tell. Furthermore, there are these jellyfish like creatures in the poisonous much that have the potential to move normally (while you walk slower) and who can do quite the amount of damage.

So island hopping really does turn out to be your best bet. But wait. There's more. Not only must you navigate the swamp and its poison and the jellyfish like things between islands...... there are also the enemies from the first area sitting on top of some of them. It starts friendly. It starts with just a few of them sitting in your way. And then it gets nasty. The game throws a giant one surrounded by a few smaller ones on an island you MUST access as far as I can tell. These giants hit extremely hard, even compared to their oddly high damaging brethren, and they have so much health that backing up and strafing is the only option. I mean... they don't want to go into the swamp right? But wait..... that means you will get poisoned and potentially ganked by jellyfish.

And the entire area I've seen so far is just more and more of this.

On top of this, there is a major problem that always seems to need addressing with dealing with Demon's Souls. You have limited healing items and poison cures. After you run out, you have to give up and go grind more before attempting this area again. It's just.... it's not fun at all.


So this might not be the worst experience I have ever had in a souls game. But it only just barely misses that bar because it is so oppressive that I can't stand to play it, bringing my progress in this game to a grinding halt.

I have not done it yet, so Thursday Night I am going to post a very long post on Dark Souls bosses (first game).

A combination of insomnia and other things means this is getting updated earlier.

Here is the first part of what I wanted to do for Dark Souls

Dark Souls Bosses

Before we begin, a lot of bosses are optional, so:

Required Bosses:
Asylum Demon (tutorial boss)
Belfry Gargoyles (bell one)
Chaos Witch Quelaag (bell two)
Four Kings (one of the four great souls)
Great Grey Wolf Sif (need the ring he drops to get to the Four Kings)
Gwyn Lord of Cinder (final boss)
Iron Golem (beat to get to Anor Londo)
Ornstein and Smough (beat to get the Lordvessel)
Pinwheel (must beat to get to Tomb of the Giants)
Nito (one of the four lords souls)
Bed of Chaos (one of the four lords souls)
Seathe the Scaleless (one of the four lords souls)
Manus (final boss of dlc)
Sanctuary Guardian (first dlc boss)
Artorius of the Abyss (required dlc boss)


Optional Bosses:
Taurus Demon (skippable with Master Key as starting gift)
Capra Demon (you don't ever need to go to The Depths, and this guy just gives you the key to that area)
Gaping Dragon (you don't ever need to go to The Depths if you go to Blighttown through Darkroot Basin)
Ceaseless Discharge (skippable with the Chaos Servants covenant shortcut)
Crossbreed Priscilla (purely optional)
Dark Sun Gwyndolin (purely optional)
Demon Firesage (skippable with covenant shortcut)
Centipede Demon (skippable with covenant shortcut)
Moonlight Butterfly (purely optional but guards an ember and the key needed to get Havel's Ring)
Stray Demon (purely optional but gives you titanite slab)
Black Dragon Kalameet (optional dlc boss)
Black Hydra (skippable but guards a covenant)
Hydra (skippable if you buy the Covenant of Artorius for 20k from the undead parish blacksmith)

Without further ado....

Asylum Demon - Big fat impish demon found at the end of the tutorial dungeon, you get two chances to fight this. The first time, you can run through the room and escape through a door on the left, proceeding through the level. If you fight it during it's first appearance and win, you will get the Demon's Great Hammer as a reward. However, it's first appearance is technically harder for two reasons.

1) You have less items.
2) You can't do a drop attack first.

This makes it harder to beat, but not impossible (especially if you chose firebombs as your starting item). That being said, you will still have to go through the level as if you had not killed it, and the weapon is not something you can wield initially (or at all frankly once you have options), so I would probably recommend just getting the weapon on your second playthrough for completion's sake on NG+, when this guy won't be a pushover but will still be significantly easier.

Once you've gone through most of the level, you will get to go through the boss door. The boss will be below you, and this is where the game attempts to teach you to do the drop down attack. If you succeed, you will take out about half it's health and the fight will be much easier. As for the actual boss, it's a big slow enemy with a club that does lots of damage with its attacks. The strategy is to roll away from its attacks and then smack it honestly. It has some other moves, but none of them are that dangerous if you just roll out of range.


Taurus Demon - A big minotaur-like demon you fight on a bridge. Becomes a common enemy later in the Demon Ruins. The best strategy for this fight is to actually climb the ladder behind you at the beginning of this bridge and kill the archers before pissing it off. Then proceed down the bridge until it appears. Then run back and climb the ladder. You can then A) attempt drop attacks (kind of hard by yourself) or B) wait for it to come up to this much larger area where you can circle around what is essentially just another hard hitting enemy that you can roll to dodge most of its attacks.

This fight is optional if you have the master key and can access the Valley of Drakes (can be a starting gift).


Bell Gargoyles - Found at the top of the church in the Undead Parish, these massive gargoyle beasts carry halberds and breath fire. It's possible to kill the first before the second becomes a problem but very hard to do so, especially on NG. They tend to alternate between melee smacking you with their halberds and breathing fire, usually one doing the one while the other does the other. They are good, but not perfect, at protecting each other's weaknesses. A good strategy is to focus on one, doing damage to it whenever you can, and to finish it off before dealing with the other (they are much easier one on one; another big strafe-able enemy honestly).

The other major strategy for this fight is to summon the two npc's before it. If you've talked to one and freed the other from his cell (inside the church; you should have the key by now), you can summon 2 NPC phantoms that will finish the fight for you frankly. As long as you know how to survive till then.

Cutting off either one's tail gives you the Gargoyle Tail Axe.


Capra Demon - A demon found in the Lower Undead Burg, this thing becomes a common enemy later in the Demon Ruins. It's much faster than the other bosses up till now, but it's still essentially someone you can melee strafe. The reason this boss is tough is two-fold.

1) You fight him in a very compacted area.
2) There are two hounds with him at the beginning of the fight.

This fight is optional and only required if you want to visit The Depths.

The fight will start with all 3 of them running at you as soon as you go through the fog gate. The first order of business is to get out of the corner. After that, kill both dogs any way you can. Once they are dead, you can essentially play ring around the rosy with a boss that isn't that hard without his hounds (just fight him like any other boss, albeit with less space, or use the ledge in the arena to semi-kite him).

Killing it gives you the key to The Depths.

Gaping Dragon - Boss of The Depths, it's an undead dragon (kind of) whose death will reward you with the key to one of the ways into Blighttown. This boss has two ways it moves about the arena. It can have its belly low to the ground, in which case it will be bad at turning but move faster than you. Or it can be leaning far off the ground, in which case you move faster but can't turn as fast as it. The close to the ground position is not one it attacks from that much, although it can try to ram you or melee if you are not being careful. Most of it's attacks occur from the upright position. It has a lot of melee attacks, some sort of vomit attack that corrodes your equipment, and a flying melee sort of attack. Overall? As long as you avoid the acid, this boss is kind of kite-able. That being said, I would try to summon help from other players.

A very important thing to note is that you should kill the non-re-spawning Channeler in the area above this arena (accessed through elsewhere in the level). Between it's magic and it's buffing the boss, it makes your life unnecessarily difficult if you don't deal with it first.

Cutting off this boss's tail gives you the Dragon King Greataxe. And frankly? That's the only reason I would ever come down here during a 2nd playthrough (I still need it). The area this guy's key leads you to is unnecessarily difficult to traverse compared to the other entrance to Blighttown. This fight is, of course, optional.

Back to Dark Souls 2 for a little bit.

Dark Souls 2: Shrine of Amana

So. In Dark Souls 2, farming off an area is done by killing every enemy enough times to make it stop respawning. Made much easier with something like a homeward bone, this lets you walk around the area and get to the boss fog much easier. If done properly, you also farm it off little by little so you get to keep all of the souls involved in farming off the area and each spot is relatively simple.

So...... against my better judgment, because I hate doing this, in order to beat this area I am probably going to use said tactic at some point when I have more time available.


I've spent about 30 minutes playing this area. I've died twice. And... well let's describe it shall we?

So. A few things you might want while trying to come in here. Well, for starters you may want a ranged way to deal with things. Not extreme long range but at least a way to deal with things so they are not straight in your face. I would frankly suggest Dark Orb and at as many copies as you've got if that's an option. Otherwise, well... a good bow and a lot of arrows.

Second, you are going to want some sort of light source. Now I know what some of you are thinking. And it is not THAT bad. But there are quite a few water areas where a light source makes them easier to not um... fall to your death if you don't have the path memorized. That being said, Cast Light is infinitely better than a torch here as you won't aggro the Amana abominations with Cast Light the way you would with a torch.

Third, you are going to want a decent sword if you can get one. There are some enemies here best dealt with by stunning them into oblivion with melee.


Now that that is all out of the way, shall we begin?

So, you begin at the Shrine of Amana bonfire. And the path down is a tower. You take this path down and you will reach your first landing. The door out here will take you to a chest with a Skeptic's Spice, guarded by a single poison enemy that is ... well kind of negligible at this point in the game.

Once you get to the bottom of the tower, it is time to go into the water. And this is where the game first starts to be mean. So your goal is that first hut. You don't need a light source for this part. On your way to the hut some knights will attack you. They do enough damage and wreck enough of your stamina that I would say to employ Dark Orb if you have it or dodging or ranged tactics if you don't. Now, once they are all out of the way, look around before approaching the hut. You see those little lumps in the water that have an orangish glowing bug cloud thing above them? These are the abominations of the area. They can inflict bleed. And while they are not terribly dangerous they will aggro in groups if you have a lit torch and THAT is very dangerous. Use some sort of ranged tactic to kill all of these in this area before moving to the hut. They are lulled (until first damage) by the lady singing in the hut, and if you approach it she will..... well stop singing.

Once you get to the hut, talk to the first Milafinato (singing ladies honestly). If you talk to her A LOT you will get a smooth and silky stone. Out the other side of the hut is more watery paths. At some point here a third enemy will show up. Basically put, there are mages in this area that will spam heavy homing soul arrow and nothing else, and they are on islands on the water. There are two ways to deal with them relatively harmlessly.

1) Extreme long range attacks.
2) Learn to roll. Then use a light source and rolling to approach them and stunsmack them into oblivion. I unfortunately have to do this one, but fortunately I am very good at rolling.

So. This level is effectively just moving from watery path to dry land and back, with the occassional real need for some sort of light source for some water areas, until you get to the last area before the 2nd bonfire of the level. This area is particularly difficult because two mages and two knights will all aggro and attack you at about the same time, making it extremely hard to deal with any of them.

Also, be warned, there is an ogre hippopotamus cyclops before the second hut. It will not follow you if you retreat far enough down the path or go into the hut, and it walks very slowly. But it WILL kill you if you try to do anything to it at melee range, and it's best to just leave this thing alone.

Also let it be known that you will eventually come across aberrations where noone is singing, and that WILL cause you problems if you don't take it slowly.

Also let it be known that there are some REALLY dangerous side paths, that are obviously side paths, that I would recommend not going down in order to keep your stress levels low, at least until you've beaten the boss and exploring is at least somewhat more stress free-ish.

Finally, let it be known that there is no bonfire here other than the first

And...... well this part with the 4 enemies is about where I died the second time so there's not much more to say. I will go into great detail about the boss once I can get there reliably enough to know more than just the basics of the fight. But I need to get to the 2nd bonfire first.

Always with the Dark Souls. Which I shall not read until I've actually played it.