With the wyvern dead there’s not much really to say about the rest of the peak. There’s a bunch more of those tough dragon-snake-men as well as some dragon-snake-priests that can summon powerful human heroes to fight you (most of which drop unique items the first time you kill them). You can also find a titanite slab and a warrior wearing the super-heavy Havel armor set. Killing him doesn’t earn you the armor but it does cause a random corpse in an unrelated area to spawn with the set as loot (no idea how you’re supposed to figure that out without a guide).

I suppose there’s also a super-duper-mega-ultra bonus boss here but Fault is just going to ignore him, possibly forever. Discretion is the better part of valor and all that.

Even if you ignore the bonus boss you can still fight your way all the way to the top of the peak where you’ll find an alter overlooking what seems to be a giant petrified dragon the size of a mountain. Meditating there earns you a special dragon stone that lets you transform your torso into a sort of dragon-hybrid form if you aren’t wearing any armor. I guess it’s cool if you’re into that (Fault’s prefers her armor).

But you know who is into that? That depressed knight that’s been hanging around the Firelink shrine all game. Return to home base with the dragon stone and the blacksmith will mention that the depressed knight wants to meet up with you in one of the old boss arenas. As soon as you show up the knight mentions something about how the path of the dragon only allows for one disciple at a time at which point he murderers you and steals your dragon stone.

Now the funny thing here is that he had just asked for the thing or maybe offered to trade his socks or some other random item for it Fault would have gladly accepted like the side-quest hungry RPG protagonist she is. But he just had to go and introduce murder into the mix and Fault is now dedicated to respawing again and again until she has her revenge. At which point, having earned a complete set of dragon artifacts, she promptly gets on with her life and never thinks about the way of the dragon again.

News Flash! Hands are still really hard to draw.

Anyways, now seems like a good time to go and refight Prince Lothric’s brother and after a few more deaths than I’d like to admit Fault finally emerges victorious.

Ok, now I must really have all the Lords of Cinder. The thrones are all full and everything. That means it’s time for the final boss!

So where is that last bonus dungeon hiding?

Remember how after killing the Consumed King we learned the Way of the Dragon gesture? Well if you head back to Irithyl Dungeon and poke around a bit you’ll eventually find a bunch of corpses along with a petrified dragon man all doing that exact same pose on a certain cliff. There’s even a little rug set out with just enough room for you to squeeze in. Settle into some dragon meditation and then wait for a bit and you’ll be transported the Archdragon Peak.

Like the name suggests it’s a giant dragon themed mountain temple.

The main enemy in the region are dragon snake people who alternate between fighting with weapons, breathing fire and snapping at you with their creepy extending necks. Fight past a couple groups of them and you very suddenly reach the first boss of the area: A giant and nigh invulnerably ancient wyvern.

A helpful note on the ground suggests trying a plunging attack, but the only way to get above the dragon is by navigating through enemy filled ruins all while the wyvern lobs fire at you. But Fault is the master of dodge rolling and makes it to the plunge point with easy and grace.

She then falls horribly to her death because apparently you have to plunge attack from just the right spot to hit the wyvern’s head and if you accidentally position yourself two extra feet to the right you just graze the thing’s neck and then splat against the ground.

Wile E. Coyote, I feel your pain

But whatever. It’s not like dodge rolling to the top of the ruins was particularly hard and on Fault’s third try she sticks her rapier into the wyvern’s head and skewer’s it’s brain Skyrim style. She’s then rewarded with a ton of souls and teleported to the next portion of the dungeon (which thankfully has a bonfire right at the entrance so we can go spend those souls before we lose them).

Last time Fault dodge rolled past hundreds of hours worth of game design in order to jump straight to the next boss: The sickly prince Lothric.

It looks like it should be an easy win, but you’re not fighting the sick prince. No, you’re fighting his brother who happens to be an armored giant with a flaming sword and the ability to teleport.

Now conceptually I really like this fight. Teleportation is a cool gimmick and it forces you to abandon all your old ideas about managing range because there is no such thing as “keeping a safe distance” from an enemy that can spontaneously blink across the entire room.

I’m pretty sure Sun Tzu forgot to cover this particular scenario

The problem here, like with most interesting Dark Souls fights, is the camera. Sometimes your camera follows the boss after he teleports, making it easy to block or dodge his next attack. Other times it doesn’t forcing you to spin around wildly looking for the boss while mashing the lock-on button and hoping you don’t get backstabbed or hit by a shockwave in the process.

If the camera always stayed locked on that would be great. If it never followed the teleport I could manage. But it’s this randomness that (literally) kills me. Again and again. Every once and a while I get him to his second stage but I never quite win.

Ok, let’s take a break from Prince hunting and go explore the last optional area in hopes of getting Fault a few more levels.

Last time Fault killed yet another plot boss and is now allowed to enter the second half of the Lothric Castle mega-dungeon: a giant library filled with forbidden knowledge. It also has a crystal sorcerer just like the one we fought as a boss back at the road of sacrifice. You did read the lore attached to his soul/items and remember that there were two of them, right?

Every time you hurt the crystal sage miniboss he moves a little further up the library tower and he proves a constant soul spear spamming nuisance until you finally kill him.

Fortunately the dungeon’s other gimmick is much more fun. You probably noticed that all of the sorcerer NPCs in the library have giant candles on their heads. There are also giant vats of wax you can dunk your head in if you want your own candle hat.

“Why would you want a candle hat?” you ask.

“Why wouldn’t you want a candle hat?” I counter.

I guess if you absolutely need a reason there is the fact that the candle renders you immune to the ghostly hands that reach out of various shelves and books and curse you to death.

So get a candle head, avoid the curses, fight your way upwards, make a quick trip outside, fight some gargoyles make it to the top and finally face off with a classic FromSoftware encounter: A trio of violent adventurers made up of a warrior, a ranger and a sorcerer.

But at this point the dungeon has dragged on long enough so Fault just dodge rolls past them and the entire army they brought for backup in order to reach the boss arena and a convenient nearby elevator that drops her near the bonfire she unlocked after killing the Dragon Rider Armor. Somewhere during this process she also finds a rare titanite slab and boosts her hollow rapier to a full +10 but I ain’t telling you where in case you want the joy of finding it yourself. (And if you don’t there’s always the wiki.)

If it works it works.

With the creepy dark bonus area of the way Fault is now back to exploring Lothric Castle and is making much better progress thanks to her new armor and levels. It doesn’t take her long at all to fight past a few waves of soldiers and reach a convenient bonfire placed just before a big old castle guarded by twin dragons that barbecue anything that tries to get close to the castle gate.

Back in my generic file I just super-tanked the flames and dodge rolled to the exit but Fault can’t do that which leads me to discover that if you drop off the bridge in front of the castle there’s a little path that lets you sneak up behind the dragons. It looks like they’re both being controlled by some sort of ooze parasite. Killing the sentient infection kills the dragons and the path to the castle’s first plot boss is now clear.

I must admit it’s not often an action game leaves me thinking “If only Dr. Mario were here”.

The so called Dragon Rider Armor looks kind of like someone took one of the most infamous armored bosses from Dark Souls 1 and then stuck him in the microwave until he started melting. This boss hits hard and can enchant his weapon with lightning but he’s fairly easy to circle strafe and can’t do much to you as long as you stay behind him. Just be warned that the bizarre dragon-sized butterflies floating nearby will occasionally bombard the arena with magic which forces you to worry about dodging two attack patterns at once.

Beyond the optional boss in the dark copy of the tutorial area is a dark copy of the Firelink shrine prowled by three Black Knights which explode into pinatas of rare loot thanks to Fault’s high luck and covetous ring. Fault now switches into what will be her default armor set for the rest of this playthrough: Black Knight armor but with the Dancer’s Helm to save a bit on equip load. Good defense, looks cool, light enough for fast dodge rolls.

I never really noticed before but this armor set has a certain Darth Vader feel to it, doesn’t it?

Beyond the knights are some interesting goodies including a special item that can be used to unlock a bonus ending. I did this on my first playthrough for no good reason other than I had found the area on my own without any wiki help and I didn’t want that to go to waste. This time around we’re just going to stuff the ending item in our box and forget about it so I can see the normal ending instead.

With the corrupted king out of the way Fault can wander into a small underground cavern and learn the “Path of the Dragon” meditation gesture from an unusually zen corpse. There’s also an enemy or two and a fairly boring chest. Disappointing reward for beating an optional boss, right?

WRONG!

This little area actually has an entire secret zone hidden behind an illusionary wall.

The “untended graves” are a perfect copy of the tutorial area but filled with vicious undead. Also the sun appears to be missing. And the stars. In fact everything is deeply disturbingly dark.

While it’s hard to say exactly what’s going on here it seems this whole area is either an alternate reality where the First Fire died or perhaps an interactive vision of what a world without Fire would be like.

This is cool because while a lot of people both in and out of game have suggested we should just let the Fire die nobody really knows what that would accomplish. The status quo of the Age of Fire is pretty bad but that doesn’t’ necessarily mean that the Age of Dark would be any better.

Likelihood of stubbing your toe probably isn’t the best metric for solving ethical dilemmas, but it’s probably not the worst either.

Anyways, new optional area means a new optional boss. It’s actually the tutorial boss all over again, but stronger and faster than ever before. He’s one of those fighters who can just string together combo after combo, leaving only the tiniest of opportunities to actually fight back. Definitely a good place to burn an ember and summon a friendly phantom. If you killed the crazy katana wielding sword master back in the normal fire link area you can summon him here. Otherwise I guess you’ll need online help.

This is another boss that killed my non-gimmick character dozens of times in a row. In fact, it caused me to walk away from the game for several days (I got lost and assumed this was a required boss). But somehow Fault emerged victorious on her first try. Just like with the Sullivan fight I blame this on good muscle memory from my previous file along with the good luck of having the boss focus on the NPC phantom just long enough for me to pull off a brutal combo at the end of the fight.

Entering Lothric Castle means Fault is now in the final stretch of the game and boy does it stretch. On my non-gimmick file this whole area took me by surprise. I had already killed the three Lords of Cinder and was ready for a final boss so getting hit with a surprise fourth Lord of Cinder and a fairly complex dungeon really messed up my internal sense of pacing.

Anyways, two paths here in the castle. One leads to a garden full of poison beyond which lies a bonus boss that I almost insta-killed in my non-gimmick file. The other path leads through multiple layers of castle security and drops you off in front of a pair of dragons that are guarding the next quest boss.

Fault spends some time getting absolutely slaughtered along both paths, but it’s not all bad news. There are titanite chunks scattered all over both areas, more than enough to raise a weapon all the way to +8, maybe even +9 if you look extra hard or get lucky with enemy drops. And if there’s one thing Fault is good at it’s getting lucky with enemy drops.

Funny story: Half the reason I can’t draw straight lines is apparently because I was using the wrong driver for my tablet. That’s been fixed so from here on out all jagged lines will be all my Fault.

So, +9 lucky rapier, two paths. Let’s hit the bonus boss first.

The Consumed King seems to be the latest proof that dabbling in the magical legacy of an insane mutant dragon is probably a bad idea. The King himself has become some sort of warped lizard person who casts crystal magic all while babbling about his son. Which, as far as we can tell, doesn’t exist.

Like most bosses he can kill Fault with just one or two good combos and the key to success is not letting him do that. In his first phase this means backing off a safe difference when he surrounds himself with magic mist. In his second phase he gets much more physical and the new best strategy is to stand beneath him since most of his attacks don’t hit things right next to him. Some do, but if you have a decent shield and enough health you can probably survive long enough to heal.

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?

First stop on Fault’s pre-endgame leveling tour is Irithyll Prison. I happen to know there’s a NPC down here who’ll be our buddy if we break her out of jail. She’s in the same rough area where we found the Profane Coal, which is too bad because that area was guarded by half a dozen of those jailer cultists who temporarily drain your max HP every time you get close. That wasn’t such a problem when Fault’s only goal in life was to dodge roll her way to the coal and then die, but now that we need to survive long enough to hold a full conversation with someone we’re going to need to clear them out.

Fortunately Fault has just enough DPS and stamina to safely stun lock one of them to death, so all we have to do is aggro one of them, lead it away from the rest of the group and then stab it to death before they can kill us. As long as we don’t ever let them attack it doesn’t matter that we’re down to only 1 hp.

A tedious process to be sure, but it earns us a bunch of souls and lets us free a prisoner who might very well be an abyssal child of darkness but, hey, what’s a cursed fate or two between friends? This particular lady is an important late-game trainer for dark sorceries, advanced pyromancies and a possible source of dark miracles. Fault can cast absolutely zero of these so rescuing her was more of just a thing to do to pass the time.

Next up is one of, in my opinion, the better bits of level design in DS3 and one I’m going to talk about at length (so I wouldn’t blame you if you skip to the next post).

It all starts when you open one of the rare non-mimic chests in the game and find access to a key that supposedly opens the oldest cell in Irithyll prison. But where would we find that?

Well, the key description mentions that the first prisoner was a giant and the first cells were built at his feet. So let’s go find a big room with a giant. Or at least a big room that used to have a giant before Fault stabbed him in the shin a few dozen times.

Looking around the room you’ll notice some cell windows built into the wall and behind one of them is a room with a corpse, an item and a locked door. Seems like a good candidate for the cell we’re trying to unlock. But how do we get over there?

You think for a bit and remember that there was a certain path in the Profane Capital that lead to an underground swamp surrounding a small church that had stairs that lead right back to the giant’s room. Obviously that means the Church must be right next to the giant’s cell and thus right next to the room you’re trying to unlock.

You head to the area to investigate but realize that following the stairs back to the giant takes you much too high to reach the door you want. So you go back down the stairs a bit and start looking around really closely and notice that one of the windows set into the rock wall near the roof the church doesn’t have any bars set into it. Jumping through that window leads to the cell behind the giant’s room and gives you access to a covetous ring that increases your item discovery rating by 50. Added on top of Fault’s high luck we’re close to breaking 200 now. No idea what that mathematically means but I expect many good drops in her future.

Anyways, what I like about this particular secret is how logical the whole progression is. It’s not some random secret you can only find through luck or by obsessively head butting every wall you find in search of illusions. Instead it’s a matter of following clues and thinking carefully about level geometry.

Treasure in hand Fault does a little bit more grinding and exploring and finally earns enough souls to raise her luck to 42 and, more importantly, raise her strength to 14. That is just high enough to switch over to the Dragon Crest Shield, which I personally think is one of the best medium shields in the game. It completely blocks physical damage, almost completely blocks fire damage and can take a few hits before depleting all your stamina.

The best defense is a good offense, but the Dragon Crest shield is a close second.