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.

My favorite mid-level grinding spot is probably the Yor the Giant bonfire, which is only fifty or so feet away from three gargoyles and a dozen cultists. Killing them all is worth around 20,000 souls and while they aren’t exactly super-easy to fight the fact they’re so close to the bonfire means it’s easy to retrieve your souls and retreat if you goof up and die.

At the moment I only need 12,000 or so souls per level so I’m basically getting a level and a half for every run.

After a little farming I raise Fault’s luck to 40 (because that’s a nice round number) and then boost her Vitality to 20 (another nice round number) and her stamina and endurance to 15 each. This also means I have enough excess equip load to upgrade my armor ever so slightly by buying the Outsider Pants the shop lady has been selling ever since I killed a couple unique enemies in the Farron Woods.

Side Note: Fault’s luck score is finally high enough to actually qualify for her starting dexterity of 13. We are finally 100% in line with our Luck Knight build restrictions.

What a silly way to play the game.

With Sulliman dead Fault emerges into the ruins of Anor Londo. Fortunately they’re only a fraction of the size of the original Anor Londo and mostly serve as a speed bump on your way to the final Lord of Cinder.

Funny trivia: In the original game Anor Londo was in pretty good shape except for a single giant window that had a broken panel which you could sneak through to find a bonus item. Centuries later in Dark Souls 3 the rest of Anor Londo now lies in ruin but that one window has somehow been repaired.

Real estate agents always seem to gloss over the high upkeep costs involved in owning a giant fantasy castle.

After a quick trip through the ruins Fault can now fight Aldritch the Devourer of Gods. It goes very very poorly.

Aldritch is a challenging boss, and not in a fun way. His main gimmick revolves around constantly spamming a pair of homing attacks. The first summons a swarm of energy balls that float around randomly for a bit before suddenly trying to murder you. The second summons a hail of magical arrows that chase you around the arena for several seconds and come very close to auto-killing anyone silly enough to stand under the rapid shower of death.

Between these two attacks you’ll spend most of the fight dodging, which leaves very few opportunities to actually attack the boss and leaves you with the unpleasant sensation of working very very hard just to make zero progress.

Seems as good a time as any to go off and grind for levels. Fault could really use some extra health and better armor.

To get to the next boss Fault needs to return to the Boreal Valley and fight past a bunch of ghost zombie swordsmen who can unleash brutal multi-hit combos. On my non-gimmick file I absolutely hated fighting these things but as a rapier wielding Luck Knight I find I can actually stun lock most of them to death. Light fast weapons certainly do shine in the right situation.

This gives me a relatively easy path to the much dreaded Pontificate Sulliman, a super-aggressive swordsman who barely gives you time to breath and has very few openings for fighting back. He was probably the toughest boss I fought on my normal file and was responsible for countless deaths. I can only imagine how much worse it will be with Fault.

In fact, I know for a fact my first attempt will be doomed since I used up all but three of my Estus Flasks just getting to him. I should probably retreat and come back later with full supplies, but I have 30+ embers so I figure I as long as I’m here I might as well burn one and summon the nearby phantom so he can teach Fault his unique gesture. And I figure as long as I have a phantom I might as well drop in on the boss to refresh my memory on how he moves.

Fault emerged victorious, first try, with basically no healing items.

I can only assume this is a miracle of muscle memory from my last playthrough mixed with a little bit of luck. The enemy really left himself open a few times and let me get in a couple free combos and that really can make all the difference.

Have you ever wondered what Dark Souls would be like as a politically charged cyberpunk adventure? No? Okay then…

Last time Fault watched as the game defeated one of it’s own minibosses, leaving the way clear to enter the Smoldering Lake, which leads to one of my favorite Dark Souls 3 moments.

You enter the lake (which is more like a sulfur swamp), hear a big “twang” noise and a few seconds later a giant iron ballista bolt blasts you off your feet.

Your first reaction is shock. Did I just get hit with a ballista bolt?

Your next reaction is confusion. Why is there a ballista inside an underground cave?

Then you get shock again as a giant lightning sand worm bursts out of the ground.

Then comes enlightenment. So that’s why there’s an underground ballista.

Then comes death. Because Dark Souls.

Anyways, Fault spends a few lives playing matador with the sandworm in hopes of getting the ballista to kill the thing off. This eventually works landing us six thousand souls (doesn’t seem worth it), an awesome miracle she can’t use and an undead bone shard for boosting our flask (hooray for that at least).

That reminds me, isn’t there a new Monster Hunter game coming out soon?

Fault then runs around the ruins of Lost Izalith for a bit until she gets tired of fighting demons and decides to just grab a few levels and then head to the next main game boss.

Now that our Luck Knight has a Lucky Sword we can legitimately fight our way through the prison, earning enough souls from combat and consumed items to finally heal Fault’s little hollowing problem. We then take the prison’s secondary exit and wind up in the Profane Capitol which houses Yor the Giant, Lord of Cinder.

Is Fault strong enough to fight such a powerful Lord of Cinder? Surely this will push her to the limits of her skill and beyond…

Ha ha, just kidding. It’s a gimmick boss and a huge call back to Demon’s Souls. As long as you have enough health to survive the occasional hit this is easy.

Fault dodge rolls into the room and grabs the Storm Ruler great sword lying nearby. I then use my l33t gamer skills to run away from the boss while navigating the menu system and equipping the Storm Ruler, which is heavy enough I have to remove Fault’s helmet in order to stay light enough to dodge roll.

This rare glimpse of Fault’s actual face leaves me wondering why in the world I chose the ugly bed head hair style for the poor girl. Hopefully the DLC will introduce a barber NPC.

Anyways, once you have the sword the rest of the fight is easy. Two hand the weapon and hold down the weapon skill button to summon a small tornado around the blade. Slowly walk backwards while charging in order to avoid the boss. If necessary dodge roll. It interrupts the charge but is better than dying. Once you finally get a full charge keep holding down the skill button and then tap attack in order to unleash a brutal wind slash that should eat up around 20% of Yor’s health. Repeat four more times and you win.

Dark Souls joke or actual Oklahoma weather forecast?

Thanks to a suicidal loot run Fault now has access to the Profane Coal. She heads back to Firelink and hands it over to Andre the blacksmith, who warns us it’s evil (as if we somehow didn’t notice the fact it’s a cursed ever-burning skull). But that hardly seems important because now we can finally use that gamechanger item we found way back at the road of sacrifices.

It’s a Hollow Gem for making Hollow Weapons which have the unique trait of doing extra damage based on the user’s LUCK!!!

On the one hand that is obviously an evil artifact. On the other hand Fault’s sword needs more pluses.

Don’t get too excited though. Even with Fault’s high luck score switching her rapier from Fire to Hollow only slightly improves her damage and still leaves her behind your average strength or dexterity focused fighter. Still, it makes this build a little less silly and that’s always appreciated.

(Side note: Hollow weapons also boost your luck based on how hollow you are but the max is only five points and I’m not a fan of the zombie look so Fault will still be shedding her curse as soon as she can.)

Since Fault managed to clear the catacombs she can now reach the Boreal Valley and is greeted with a beautiful snow-covered city. The entrance to the area is blocked by a force field that won’t let you pass unless you’ve defeated the boss of the Chapel of the Deep. Fault has, so she’s now free to explore this beautiful area and fight the various well designed enemies that live here.

Alternatively she could dodge roll past all of them, then dodge roll right out of the city and into the nearby river, then dodge roll her way to a nearby dungeon which she dodge rolls through until she reaches a creepy basement full of prison wardens and forgotten monsters all of which she dodge rolls past in order to grab the Profane Coal.

At which point the conga line of enemies she’s aggroed all immediately rip her to shreds. But that’s OK because she got the item she wanted and your inventory goes with you when you respawn.

This series could have just been fifty drawings of Fault running from different enemies in different areas while wearing different armor sets.