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.

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.)