I am terrible.
Between my extremely slow learning curve, grinding every enemy into oblivion, and general ineptitude, let's just say I'm not Twitch streaming my Dark Souls run. I consider it a favor to everyone. I have a newfound appreciation for Vinny and Brad's playthroughs of Dark and Demon's Souls, respectively. That content was fantastic, whereas no one should ever bear witness to me getting up to speed. I wish I could un-see some of the failure, honestly, but the lost souls will eat away at my lost soul. My spirit officially broke when I tried to backstab this turtle-y thing, and it instead somehow saw it coming and basically gave me the people's elbow to immediately crush and kill me at a cost of about 4200 souls. At that time, I could have used that amount to level up about three times. That was the first time I'd been Dark Souled, but certainly not the last.
I do not play well with others.
Actually, I'm not playing with others at all. I'm only playing offline. I miss the messages, bloodstains, and seeing randoms run around, but I just have zero interest in PvP, invasions, or even summoning. I'm basically Lone Wolf McQuade minus the sweet-ass Ram Charger, Pearl beer, and combat ability. Actually, I could go get some Pearl beer. Combat ability is a work in progress. Sadly, I'm not sure a functional Ram Charger still exists. I digress. I know the general school of thought is that invasions are "part of the game", but I'll pass on that. Yes, it's worth the health hit to me to play permanently hollow (Edit: nevermind, it doesn't work like that, thanks @spoonman671), because the first time some yahoo kills me when I've got a significant amount of souls to recover, or if there's some kind of griefing item like the Demon's Souls scraping spear that exclusively dickheads use just to be dickheads, I won't handle that well. When I'm in the mood to play multiplayer with assholes; I'll play Call of Duty.
I am cheesy.
I have neither stones nor shame. I find myself trying to hide beside doorways to ambush enemies, fight them on stairwells, and generally do anything I can do to avoid a straight-up fight. I kite the shit out of everyone to the best possible spot. Stairs are my favorite. I'll gladly chop ankles while they swing over my head and run away like a wee girl if things go south. My playstyle is the anti-Vinny. I even went so far as to actively seek out the Soul Arrow that Brad refused to use in Demon's Souls because it was too effective, only to discover after buying it that as a Bandit, I was woefully short on stats for it. Learning that I couldn't even use the cheap strategy I was going for was a wonderfully pathetic moment. Someday I'll get that 10th Intelligence point, though, and then it's on for 30 potential moments of greatness. Until then, I'm pretty sure spamming arrows from afar is the definition of honor. Right?
I am Legend.
I'm on a path to murder every enemy in SotFS to extinction and enjoy some peace and quiet. Not in a cool, rampage-y way, in a sad, grind-y way because I refuse to face more than one opponent at once. I didn't plan to do this. I started grinding, enemies stopped respawning, and once I realized there was the possibility of perma-death, suddenly my goal became to wipe everyone out. It's working. I eradicate one enemy and move on to the next. Don't worry, no one has to know. It's not how you collect souls, it's that you collect souls. The Emerald Herald isn't worried about my strategy; she's just there to be impressed by all these hot souls I'm packing. And yes, I am the next monarch, because there will be very few alternatives by the time this shit's over. It ain't gonna be meek-ass Maughlin, lazy-ass Lenigrast, or the talking cat. Smart money is on this guy due to sheer determination. I'm going to rule a world with no one left alive unless I find them useful. Aaaaahhhh, what kind of awful dictator has this game turned me into?
I'm officially hooked on Dark Souls, though. I'm by no means good at this game, but I find the struggles highly rewarding when overcome. It's a thorough beatdown, but it's a well-crafted beatdown that makes you learn the hard way. I've been getting destroyed in Heide's Tower of Flame, but I'm gradually improving and being forced to try different strategies. Figuring out the patterns and getting the timing down is key. That is, until you get too excited and swing your stamina away, or get staggered, or an enemy busts out something you didn't expect, etc., etc. I'm actually doing this without much guidance, BTW. I looked up some early items like the Ring of Binding to get and checked out a few purchases, but that's about it. I have no idea where I'm going and have no desire to follow a walkthrough, and since I'm offline, no messages are helping me, either. It's just me and DSII, and I'm enjoying that.
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