1/31/14: Another Night, Another Knight

See what I did there?

Anyway, I was determined to beat the dragon on the bridge last night . . . and I didn't.  My trick of shooting him with arrows under the bridge shot off his tail (netting me a Drake Sword that I don't think I can use), but after 173 arrows I hadn't killed him so I went for a different tactic.  The underpass did allow me to cross with a few battles (and some rats) and make it inside the castle.  There I found a charging armor clad boar that routed me my first time through.  The second time I went there I thought about avoiding him by going up some stairs only to find another one of those stupid knights.  I tried to run away from the knight, but it led to the boar and I wasn't able to solve that problem.

Eventually I did by cheating the boar.   Basically I would get him to charge, then shoot him in the ass with arrows as he walked away.  At some point he would turn around to come get me and I would just duck into the hallway (where he couldn't reach).  With him out of the way I cleared some hollow ones and moved forward.  I met a new type of enemy with a cape and small shield and kept pushing forward.  At this point I was out of health and was just hoping to find a bonfire I could use to "save."  Unfortunately that didn't work and I died somewhere in a hallway.

My big question right now is whether or not the boar comes back.  The dragon will get his tail back (although I can't keep looting it for Drake swords), and I have a tactic for the boar.  But it would be really nice if he didn't return.  His death animation was pretty special so I think he might no come back.  Either way I need more arrows and I am going to try to trigger the knight and get him to lose track of me on the bridge (so I can rain firebombs on him).  Hopefully there is a bonfire near there so I don't have to go all the way back to the Undead Burg.  The game is getting more fun but I still don't feel like I am getting "good" at it.

1/30/14: Progress?

Ok, I made it past the black knight by climbing a ledge and just throwing bombs on him.  When I ran out of bombs I was able to manage a drop attack that took him out.  I got some titanite, which is fine, and he doesn't respawn, so that is great.  I made it forward to the boss, who soundly thrashed me a few times.  I realized that I wanted to get up on the top of some tower (which was conveniently circular and arena-set) and kill some archers first.  After fighting the Taurus Demon a few times and struggling to figure out how to roll to avoid his attacks, I took a different (and I would say cheap) tactic.  I climbed the ladder to the tower, jumped down to attack him (which did massive damage compared to my other attacks), then ran away.  I would usually take one hit as I would turn around, run past him and climb up the ladder again to repeat the process.  Eventually it worked, but it felt cheap.  My other attempts (actually fighting him and throwing firebombs at him) failed pretty handedly.  After going forward a good bit and talking to some knight who apparently is trying to find his own sun (I crept up to him expecting him to turn and fight me/beat the shit out of me) I started to cross a bridge.  When a fucking dragon came, breathed fire all over the bridge killing all of my enemies and almost me.  Now the dragon is just sitting there and I am not going to fight him.  Instead I am going to crawl down to a spot on the bridge and shoot hit tail with some arrows.

All in all I have yet to feel like I have beaten a difficult part of this game in a legitimate way.  With the possible exception of the Asylum Demon, my other two conquests have only been victories by coming up with a strange way to not fight but to exploit  the game in some way.  Now I am preparing to do this again.  I know this is kind of what I was expecting from this game, but I also wonder if I will ever get  better at fighting, or if it will just be an exercise in going from one exploit to another.

1/29/14: Stupid Black Knight

I am really not making progress in this game.  I have made it to the Undead Burg (as Dan suggested) and while I have figured out how to kill most of the basic enemies in the area, I cannot manage to kill the Knight that is waiting for me at the end of the hall.  I have tried a number of things, including sitting on top of a building and throwing fire bombs at him.  While that should work (in theory) I don't have enough firebombs to make that happen.  Meanwhile as I have tried to explore this region I have found a vendor (yay!) who has sold me better armor, ammo, and most importantly a box that I can use to store things and a different box that I can use to repair my weapons.  At one point (before I found the vendor) my scimitar had been used so much that it was about to break.  Not wanting my main weapon to break, I switched over to a spear that I had found.  It was quite a different experience using the spear.  It required both of my hands, but that wasn't too bad because it gave me an increased range.  I honestly thought about going after the knight with the spear just because my blocking wasn't getting me too far with the knight and the extra range might be good.

One thing that has been nice about this section is the grinding.  I have been able to add about 7 levels to my character as I have repeatedly made it to the knight, only to die and have to go get my souls back.  Maybe I just need to level more in order to beat the knight?  There is another path that I could take to avoid the knight, but a message said that it was towards a boss and I don't think I want that.  So I'll try again to beat the knight tonight, but I doubt I will make any progress.  At this point I might be good enough to beat up on those skeletons, so maybe I should just go back there.  Past the knight (or maybe the other direction) seems to be the dragon I was worried about and I don't think I have what it takes to beat that dragon.  This game is still fun, but it certainly is work as well.

1/27/14: Left, Right or Middle?

Ok, Dan, here we go.  You've got quite a head start on me, and I doubt with a baby on the way that I will catch up to you any time soon.   But with FarCry3 behind me I am apparently in the mood to punish myself for small mistakes (I'm also playing Fire Emblem awakening on 2DS).  I figure we can go back and forth here, but rather than it being an email chain where we are always responding to each other we can just straight up post if one of us (*achem*YOU*achem*) starts running away with this thing.

I chose a Wanderer for no good reason and named it after a roleplaying character from high school.  My first thought about this that the lore was really easy to fall into.  I don't know what is going on in the story, but I am incredibly interested in this world and I expect that to fuel much of what is going on.

Of course we all know the difficulties the game presents, and by choosing Wanderer I apparently choose a not-so-easy route.  But that is fine, I am ok with failure and will be tested plenty in the future.  Killing the Abyss Demon took me 6 tries because I couldn't figure out how to roll effectively, or when I was or wasn't hit.  I also was struggling with what appeared to be a queue system for my moves.  I often rolled once, tried to attack, but was stuck in a second roll that my over zealous fingers pressed the first time.  Looks like this game is going to require a discipline that I don't have yet.

Eventually I made it to the "real" world and was presented with two/three path directions.  I talked to some guy who was totally useless right by the fire, and then wandered up a hill towards a bridge.  I killed some people, and then remembered something that Vinnie Caravella said on a Bombcast a long time ago about being able to spam some dragon on a bridge with an arrow.  Since I didn't have an arrow I decided to turn around (although I don't know if there is actually a dragon on that bridge, I couldn't see one).

I went "downhill" and got wrecked by some skeletons.  I mean seriously wrecked.  I think I died to those skeletons 10+ times before I gave up and tried the "middle" of my three options.  That did really get me anywhere.  There was a person to talk to who basically said "I would like to keep my space" so I let him be.  I climbed some stairs, got some soles of a lost traveler and think I found a pit I could fall in.  I wasn't too keen on falling into a pit since if I die down there I lose all of my souls, so I was left with fighting the skeletons some more.

Against the skeletons I figured out how to roll a bit more effectively.  Parrying doesn't seem to by me kind of thing yet, but I was able to roll and then kill a skeleton as long as it was 1 on 1 combat and I healed up a few times.  Eventually I gave up and went to bed, having not killed the two skeletons that are in the cemetery.  I guess that path goes down to Blighttown, which I do not want to go to.  If that is the case then the bridge pass would go to the other place with the bell . . . I don't really want to go there yet either.

Dan, what have you been up to in this game?  It has probably been a long time since you were where I am, but do you have a suggestion of which way to go?