I decide to test out Fault’s new fireproof shield by sending her back to the Smoldering Lake to fight the Old Demon King. I remember him as being really tough during my non-gimmick run but apparently Fault is now overleveled for this area because she just tears him to shreds. Poor guy doesn’t even drop enough souls for a full level.
Fault is obviously stronger than ever before and has a much sturdier shield so it’s time to go tackle the Boreal Dancer again. This time I succeed after about half a dozen attempts and I really do feel like I owe that victory mostly to the Dragon Crest Shield letting me tank one extra hit per combo before my guard collapsed.
So, thoughts on the Boreal dancer:
– Design wise she’s pleasantly creepy, like they took a beautiful feminine form and then stretched it out into some sort of snakelike hunchback. Very uncanny valley.
– The lock-on camera seems to target her torso, which unfortunately moves around like crazy since she tends to sways around even when standing still.
– Fight her at mid to long range and wait for her to over-commit to either a combo or a dash attack. Then jump in and stab her once or twice while she recovers. Then run away again before she catches you in her next massive combo.
Now that the dancer is dead we can go back to Firelink and buy her armor, which is kind of unique design wise. Dark Souls is a dark fantasy game and as a result most of its armor sets are semi-realistic chunks of metal with vaguely masculine outlines. But the dancer set is made of form fitting metal plates with exaggerated female curves all of which gives it a much more high-fantasy feel, like something you’d expect to see in WoW or a D&D manual.
The deeper you go into New Game ++++ the less useful armor becomes for anything other than looks.
Not complaining, mind you. It’s a pretty nifty looking set. However it’s also a fairly weak set, meaning there isn’t much reason to wear it unless you either have pathetic equip load or are carrying around super-heavy weapons and shields and have to compensate with light armor. Neither of those applies to Fault so she’ll be sticking with her current armor for now.
With the Boreal Dancer out of the way Fault heads back to the chapel and uses an ancient stone bowl to force a statue to decapitate itself which somehow triggers a ladder into dropping down and giving us access to Lothric Castle. Seems like a simple doorbell would have been a more practical choice but I’m no architect so what do I know?