Let Me Axe You a Question.

Right. Dark Souls. I'm going in.
— Chris Spann (@cs87) February 26, 2013

Sorry I've not updated this more often, Dylan. (You're the only confirmed reader I have).

So, Dark Souls was played, and progress was made. A tiny, infintesimally ephemeral speck of progress it might be; but in the land of Lordran every single one of these microscopic blips of forward movement count for something - even if I am merely pulling myself up Dark Souls' rough masonry vertical learning curve by my fingernails.

I'm fucking shithouse at Dark Souls, basically.



So, here's what happened, roughly in order:

• I realised that switching between Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Dark Souls is not a particularly clever idea. See, Dark Souls is a game about slow, measured combat; of finding your moment and striking when your enemy is showing weakness - no matter how small that chink in their armour might be. Meanwhile, Revengeance is about chopping your enemies into a squillion pieces with a sword that you can attach to your feet, all in the name of children's brains. You can see (and hopefully appreciate) the difference. As such, coming back to Dark Souls and its slow, clumsily graceful combat was a bit of a shock.
• The dancing twat with the candlestick and his army of undead soldiers wiped their arses with me again. then I remembered about getting firebombs. I went and got firebombs.
• I died a few more times, missing with about half of the firebombs I threw, before deciding that firebombs were too slow to effectively deal with the situation. Tears were shed.
• Somehow (and don't ask me how because I haven't a blue clue) I managed to aggro CandleBastard without setting off his minions. My go-to strategy of panicking, rolling and waving a blade around like an amphetamine rattled child trying to get signal on a portable telly eventually did the job, and I managed to pick my way through the undead by kiting them back along the corridor and taking carefully timed two-handed swings.
• A Soapstone message told me to try Parrying.
• I remembered about Parrying.
• I looked up how to Parry on the Dark Souls wiki. Turns out you can Parry in Dark Souls.
• I found out that if you can Parry the Bell Gargoyle's attacks away, I'm not fucking quick enough to do it. DEAD.
• Turns out you can't just run through that mob of undead warriors upstairs in the undead Parish. DEAD.
• That Balder Knight I'm not afraid of? Hit me with that massive damage locked animation move and killed me. DEAD.
• I took a wrong turn in Firelink Shrine and found a corpse holding exactly the same number of firebombs I trudged all the way back into Undead Burg for. The word "fuck" echoed around the front room.
• I cut the tail off the Bell Gargoyle. I now use it as an axe. The axe does two things: One, it puts a small symbol next to my stamina bar which I think means my defence is raised, and two, inflicts an amount of poison, bleeding and... something else on me - although they quickly go away. Weird.
• There's another Bell Gargoyle now.
• Oh, and this one breathes fire. Fucking marvellous.
• DEAD.
• DEAD. DEAD. DEAD.
• DEAD.
• DEAD.

That's enough Dark Souls for the night.
— Chris Spann (@cs87) February 26, 2013

I think I'm starting to get the hang of the first Gargoyle. I can dodge the majority of his attacks, and my shield absorbs all of his physical attacks. I can knock him down to about half health easily enough.

When his mate turns up, however; is where the trouble starts.

And by trouble, I mean fire. the fire kills me every single time. I fucking hate fire.

So this is where I'm putting the following questions out to you, dear readers:

1: What level were you when you first took on the Gargoyles? I'm level 17 now, and I have a +1 Longsword. Am I woefully underspecced?

2: HOW DO I KILL THOSE FUCKING GARGOYLES I THOUGHT I UNDERSTOOD THIS FUCKING GAME

On a serious note, I know it's because I get impatient. I block a few shots, then try to Raiden my way through the fucking thing, rather than just being happy with slapping dejectedly at its wrist every time I duck out the way of it. But any advice is welcome.

Thanks.