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?
I don't know why the cemetery seems like an appealing place to explore first; it's not. I did the same thing.
ReplyDeleteThe downtrodden knight at the Firelink Shrine says that you need to ring two bells--one in the heights and one in the depths--to move on from Lordran. The lower path (towards Blighttown), however, is not the route to take.
You should head up the hill again. You won't encounter the dragon for a while yet, but at the top of the second set of stairs you'll be able to enter the aqueduct that takes you into the Undead Burg, where it feels like the game begins in earnest.
Fighting skeletons hasn't been worthwhile for me, although there are some decent finds to be made in the cemetery if you're evasive. The skeletons don't give up souls when defeated and are difficult to parry, but they can be knocked down with a striking weapon (like a mace or morning star), which makes dealing with them easier.