With the Chapel of the Deep out of the way Fault heads back to the poisonous (but leech free!) swamp and messes around with some signal fires in order to open the path to the next boss: The Keepers of Farron.
They’re another one of those interesting multi-stage boss fights. In the first stage you fight multiple keepers at a time, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on whether they decide to all focus on you or instead fight among themselves.
Finish off the boss and there’s a surprise cutscene where the blood from all the keepers comes together to reanimate a single super-keeper who lights their sword on fire and sure fights a lot like a certain Bloodborne DLC boss.
Fault makes no progress here.
Obviously I’m going to need to grind for some levels.
Or do I? One of my Firelink buddies keeps mentioning something about drawing out true potential. Fault finally lets him do it and receive a free stat point in exchange for being saddled with the good old undead curse from the first game. Now every time Fault dies she becomes slightly more Hollow. It’s just as gross as in the first game but fortunately Fault is wearing a full helm so nobody can really tell.
Like most RPG protagonists Fault will do almost anything for more pluses.
The good news here is that the more hollow Fault gets the more power her buddy will give her. This means I can earn up to four more bonus stat points just by jumping off the nearest cliff again and again.
But that hardly sounds sportsmanlike so instead I head back to the Farron Woods and take an elevator hidden in a certain tower in order to reach the top of the crumbling ruins of a once great highway bridge. Lurking here is an optional mini-boss: a washed up Stray Demon from the first game. Where Dark Souls demons were beings of fire and chaos this one has cooled down to mere rock and dust. Doesn’t mean we can take things easy though; it still has an axe bigger than Fault and while it can’t spit fireballs it can spit rocks.
Clearly this is a great place to die a bunch and rack up some hollowing.
Instead Fault emerges victorious on her second try.
Ok, new plan. Back to the Chapel of the Deep to fight those two giants that were always stomping around in the muck. You know, the ones you were clearly meant to outrun and out-think on your way to the boss.
Fault kills them both in one try without even resting at a bonfire in between. As powerful as they are they can’t really attack things near their feet and they telegraph their few stomping moves way too much.
So my plan to get Fault killed in honorable combat is apparently a bust. Time to just run around and let things maul her to death until I qualify for all five bonus points.