The most important lesson you can learn about Dark Souls is that losing your souls is not that big of a deal.

@mildmolasses: I don't wanna spoil too much here, but you can skip the Ruin Sentinals with a Pharros Lockstone and the Antiquated Key ;) Your run ain't over yet pal.

Actually, what @mosespippy said really helped me out. I had tried to go to the Tower of Flame before, but missed the chain that opened the door. I had assumed that it was meant for later in the game.

So anyway, I went that way, beat both of the knights, beat that weird 4-armed, 2-torsoed thing on the boat, and then went and beat the ruin sentinels. I had a hell of a run today and am all the way back on board with DS2

@mild

Same thing happened to me dude except it was the pursuer who had me licked and I thought I had open all available paths. Had actually sealed the game back up and was about to send it back to GF but decided to sleep on it instead. Woke up the next day and put it back in determined to beat that dude if nothing else. Long story short I'm still playing after 200 plus hours.

Co-oping is the key to acquiring tons of souls with zero risks to you. I'm racking in hundreds of thousands of souls in really short time. I've only been invaded 3 times in over 200 hours and even if you get invaded just press the ps button and sign out. It won't affect your game at all and it will cost the invader his cracked red orb if you wait till they have fully invaded.

Sign back in and continue your game. Fuck invaders, assholes looking to ruin someone else's time. I did it all the time in DS1 and it really pisses them off lol. If you really wanna stick to offline it's gonna be a long grind.

Pay no mind to how low some people "cap" themselves, keep leveling until you get the desired response from enemies. Don't know if its a bug or what but I've had a few enemies DAMN near run away from me when I approach them which surprised me the first time it happened.

Currently in the blue sentinels hunting down griefers.