I stand in front of you - I'll take the force of the blow.

I meant to write this post a long time ago, but I'm dreadful so I didn't. It's been sat as a title in my Drafts folder for the longest time, but I've decided to tackle it right now because I don't want this blog turning into "and then I did and then I did and then I did", like a child's summer holiday diary.

(Funny story: An ex of mine was almost investigated by social services when she was a child, as in her summer holiday diary she "wrote Daddy went to work and Mummy went to the pub" - her dad worked away, and her mum worked in the local pub, but would take time off when he was home. That's one's on the house.)


So, armour.

Armour is a weird thing in Dark Souls, in that very few sets (or at least, few sets I've found) are empirically "better" than others. Games like Skyrim have a very clear armour hierarchy that you start at the bottom of and travel upwards, but in Dark Souls there are a number of questions you need to ask yourself before equipping that new helmet you wrenched of the head of a hollow.

First off: Is it just going to slow you down? The heavier the armour is, the slower you run - and crucially, the longer it takes to roll and recover from it.

From what I can see there are three speeds of roll: You roll fastest when wearing gear that weighs less than 25% of your encumbrance, acceptably quickly at less than 50%, and you just fling yourself to the floor head first if wearing stuff heavier than that. Bosses like the Midnight Butterfly are easier if you can move quickly, while other areas are too treacherous to go rolling or running about much anyway, meaning that a wise adventurer will switch their gear up as and when they need to.

Next Question: How much poise does it give me? I don't 100% get poise yet, but my understanding is that the higher your poise score is, the more damage you can take without being stunned - meaning you can "poise through" attacks. This comes in handy when you're running through an bottleneck watched by archers, or dealing with multiple enemies that keep stunning you with low damage attacks (such as the Capra Demon's bellend watchdogs). You very rarely get light armour with much/any poise, but as mentioned there are ties that wearing the heavier, slower gear can, in a roundabout way, make you faster.

Question the third: What resistances does it have? Blighttown is a great example of this: It's tempting to don the heaviest, strongest plate you've got in order to deal with the Barbarian greeting party you first encounter down there; but the fact remains that they hit so hard and with such strong poisonous attacks, if you don't get home-runned off the walkway you'll just get poisoned inside your armour - which is a far bigger pain in the cock. Instead, the majority of Blighttown is better dealt with by donning as much poison-resistant stuff as possible, then using the increased mobility to get behind the horrible things that live down there and backstab them. However, as soon as you enter Quelaag's domain you have no chance of getting poisoned, but there is a real possibility that you're going to get a spidergob full of lava all over your face, so fire resistant armour is the way to go.

What's even more interesting is that - from what I can see at least - even the gear you start the game with can be a viable choice for an entire playthrough (at least as a default, "go-to" set), so long as you remember to upgrade it via Blacksmiths as you continue to play. I'm still using a slightly upgraded version of the armour I started the game with, and while I'm starting to experiment with different weapon and armour loadouts, the game stands you in good stead right from the get-go. See, Dark Souls is nice sometimes.

I spent the first few hours of the game absolutely certain that I should have found some new armour to switch to (It's worth noting I didn't buy the chainmail from the undead merchant because I wasn't observant enough to notice the whole tabbed interface thing in the shop menu), and that's what this post was originally going to be about.

Still, as is the way in Dark Souls; I persevered, pushed ahead and learned through dying that the armour you use is entirely your choice, and that each set has its own specialities, weaknesses and perks, and sometimes you have to die a couple of times to learn what you should be wearing.

That said, in a game where life is so worthless anyway, it's a wonder we bother.