No Game New Year - Grinding Dark Souls

I mentioned last week that Dark Souls is a very difficult game, but so far, that difficulty is not insurmountable. It is a plausible tactic to allow yourself to die a few times while learning the attack patterns of the monsters, and retreat from boss battles that aren’t going your way.

I had this very thing happen to me when I’d finally got far enough away from the Undead Burg to find another bonfire. I proceeded with the game from that point and found myself, after throwing myself at the Dark Garden for an hour, face to face with the Moonlight Butterfly. Incapable of inflicting much in the way of damage, I decided to backtrack for a while and grind some enemies to level up. In doing so, I discovered that I’d missed what I was supposed to be doing, which was ringing the bell at the top of the Undead Parish. I went through that particular level, which still took me a couple of hours, and actually made a lot more progress with the game than I would have done had I thrown myself into the path of the Moonlight Butterfly and her Golems many more times.

Contrast this with something like Dragon Age Origins – a good game, but as I’m absolutely useless at character builds, I’ve come very close to derailing the whole game on more than one occasion because I haven’t picked the right combination of feats etc to level up, finding myself in fights that I CANNOT avoid because of the ‘random battle’ system – and you see why I’m enjoying Dark Souls a little more. I’m not saying the same hasn’t got the potential to happen with Dark Souls, but so far I’m finding there’s more scope for dealing with it. If I’m finding one part too hard, I can look behind and do another part. Sometimes the enemies are too hard for me to kill, other times they need some concentration, and while it is a little hard to make the distinction sometimes, it does add to the challenge of the game.

 

Here’s an experience I think will become familiar quite soon: After ringing the bell at the top of the Undead Parish and being rewarded with a weapon that there is no way I can use because I’m the sorcerer, I decided to have another crack at the ‘underground’ section. I tried it a number of times before deciding that I still wasn’t good enough to take on the Skeletons (horribly difficult) at the level I was, and went around the rest of the game to grind for some experience. I finished back in the Dark Garden, and though I had no intention of fighting the Moonlight Butterfly again, I did at least get to the clearing before – killing a Golem in the process, which I was pleased with. On my way back to the Firelink Shrine, somebody invaded my world close to the exit of the Dark Garden. Not quite realising what this feature is for, I did not make a move to attack the guy who was clearly a higher level than me. They then proceeded to take me out with one Pyromancy spell, and I lost the 4000 or something souls I’d been saving – I needed around 4500 for the next level up.

“You bastard,” I thought, and hurried back to the area to recover the souls, praying that this Player vs Player mechanic didn’t extend to pinching each other’s souls. It apparently doesn’t and I got them all back. THEN I noticed for the first time that there was a different way you could go out of the garden, and found myself in what the game was calling the Dark Basin. “Oh wow, a new place to explore,” said I. I went down into the basin, got ambushed by a Knight, rolled off a cliff and lost all my souls – and when I came back to collect them, I couldn’t reach them, rolled off the cliff AGAIN and made the last hour and a half of play count for nothing except a new area.

But I guess it’s one of those things I’m going to have to get used to!