Prowler Near The Garden.

I've got the Key to the Depths.

As you might remember, I yanked it from the corpse of the Capra Demon like the legendary hero that I am. I slammed my boot on the goat prick's skull, and pulled the key from between the flaps of tattered fur and torn sinew that I left lying in the dirt in the Undead Burg.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm not shit-scared of the place, so I decided that for this addition to my Dark Souls diary, I'd go and do anything at all that wasn't heading closer to Blight Town.

First things first, I decided to go and visit my best friend, lovely strong Andre the blacksmith. I had some titanite and a few souls to spend, so I figured it was about time I upgraded and repaired my gear so more - which I went and did. Hello Longsword +4 and Leather Armour +2. Cha-ching.

I then found myself in quite a curious position: Remember the massive bastard just down the stairs from Andre that I ran away from screaming the other week? Well, I had some pretty tasty gear, almost literally no souls to lose, and no humanity to miss if he smashed me into the ground either.

Which, in true Dark Souls style, is exactly what happened.

Thing is though, in true Dark Souls style, that first fight taught me a lot about the Prowling Demon (As I now know it to be called).

He's slow, and he doesn't have a head, so he's blind. He's also in a room with a set of stairs in it, which means you can abuse the fact that in Dark Souls, being lower down than your opponent is an incredibly easy way of murderisin' foolz.

So basically, all you need to do to beat the guy is run from where you enter the room, get down the stairs, then goad the big idiot into launching into his melee combo. This consists of three attacks, but using the stairs you can hide underneath the swings and two-hand him into oblivion. He's got a thick skin, but you can mash him up pretty successfully this way. Just keep moving and his lightning bolts won't even come close.

I feel kind of sorry for the Prowling Demon; he seems to be missing a head and a leg, and has to drag himself around the room he inhabits. I don't know what happened to him, but I feel sort of mean for killing him - especially as all I got out of it was a piece of Titanite that I can't use yet.

Next up, I skipped off to Darkroot Garden. I had been there approximately eight seconds when a giant walking plant ate my head and I died. Motherfucker.

Attempt two went a little better; I learned that the plant bastards can be swiftly taken down with a couple of hard thrusts - and those thrusts will stun the bush things out of their attack animations if you can get the timing right. Three of them still makes my bladder tighten and squirt upwards into my lungs, but a swift combo of running away, screaming and slowly picking them off one by one works a charm.

I don't know what's up with that glowing door. I've left it for now. Anything glowing that colour can't mean good news in Dark Souls, so I've taken the fact that it didn't turn into a giant gaping maw and eat me into tiny pieces as a good thing. I decided to explore around the corner instead, and stumbled across a wide open area, with an item glowing in the trees - next to some kind of massive knight looking thing lying on the floor.

He looked like a black Knight, and they're twats, so I decided that the best plan of action was to run over to the item, grab it, then run away really, REALLY quickly - a plan that moved slightly further up my list of priorities when a bunch of those fucking bush things showed up again.

I ran back to Andre's room before I looked to see what I'd looted from the woods (I'd convinced myself that he'd help me kill anything that was still pursuing me)... And was overjoyed when I found out it was a whole set of new armour!

I quickly popped it on (in front of Andre - we're cool like that), and while slow, it's the first piece of kit I've found with a poise statistic - which I'm sure is absolutely great, although I'm not entirely sure what it does. I think it's got something to do with not stumbling when you get hit, but I'm not one hundred percent certain on that. It might just mean I stand more proudly, for all I know.

I then ran through Undead Burg and decided to fight the Dark Knight at the top of the watchtower near where the giant Boar was. He killed me right the fuck dead. That's all I could deal with for the night.

DARK SOULS.

(There's a prize if you get the music reference in the title of this post).