What is it you don't like?

I didn't like the crystal caves that much but that section is really short. I liked everything else just fine.

Dark souls has claimed another victim.

I liked the rest of the game just fine. Maybe get the Dlc if you want more all right content.

Generally, the second half of that game is weaker than the first half. That being said, the Duke's Archives is nothing compared to Lost Izalith in terms of their "uuuuuuuuuuugh" factors. I almost stopped playing when I hit that point. Maybe that's part of the difficulty of the game?

@cybertification: The areas designs do become a little less impressive later in the game, I think. But I do like them more than the GB crew seemed to, based on their comments in Load our Last Souls. What lord souls do you have yet to collect? That will let me know where you've got left to explore.

The Crystal Caves is a really short section, you'll be out in no time. Follow messages on the paths, or looks for falling crystal flakes to see where there is ground. You can also drop prism stones to test your next step.

Your going to hate Tomb of the Giants then.

There's not enough information to give you a proper answer.

I resolve that you've gotten the Lord Vessel, at which point you could take on any of the bosses to get the Lord Souls in any order.

@psylah:

I agree Tomb of Giants was by far the worst area in the game.

I didn't find the Crystal Caves too bad, since as someone else said, the place is really brief and you're not there for too long.

I also agree with the general consensus that the second half of the game (once you obtain the Lordvessel) is weaker than the first half. The first half is just so much more fun because the areas you're going through are connected so well and you're unlocking short cuts all over the place that make you realize how expansive and gigantic of a world this really is. It was so cool to beat a boss, and then unlock a short cut to an earlier part of the level, and so on. I didn't like Anor Londo due to how cut off it was from everything else, and the same thing with the Duke's Archives, and the Catacombs and the Tomb of Giants... Ugh, just most of the levels in the second half aren't any fun at all.

You really shouldn't even be fighting most of the enemies in the Crystal Caves

I found a walkthrough on Youtube that I hope will help you get through easily.

@veektarius: Wow...lol thanks for that.

@veektarius: I was lucky enough to see Segal when I lived in Portland, hes a decent player but his band held him up. I bought tickets for a date and the girl stood me up, cant figure why. I got a friend to go, then ten minutes at the place he gets claustrophobia and left before the show, thats what I get for taking a recovering alchoholic to a bar. Im sorry I got distracted I havent got to the caves yet. Im trying to beat the gargoyles without calling for help.

Here's what you do:
1. Equip curse-resistant gear
2. Run the fuck past everything
3. Beat boss
4. ???
5. Souls

This. However, I got ganked a few times in a row by those dumb clam monsters on my last playthrough - you really gotta lure them out one by one or they tag team you.

Guess that applies to most enemies.....either way good luck duder~!

@voshinova: Oh fuck, I forgot about the clams. Yeah, be reeeeeal careful around those suckers. XD

Crystal Caves was for me the hardest part of the game, and I found it extremely helpful to have a companion through there. As for Lost Izalith, I don't get why people say it's so hard. Maybe I was overleveled, but I found it pretty straight forward. I wouldn't say it was easy, but most of the game was constructed in a way that I didn't have that tough of a time with my build. Knight with supreme skill in both sword/shield, as well as miracles.

i really liked that part it was different, both in play style and looks, the only part i can remember hating was the T-rex lava place since i found that pretty annoying.
oh and the dragon covenant under the tree thingy, but that was mostly because i was way to under leveled to be there but still decided to continue anyway

Like others have said, the last few areas of the game aren't nearly as interesting or fun as everything before it. The enemies aren't as fun to fight, and the level layouts rely a little too much on gimmicks like the invisible floors.

I love the Tomb of the Giants though. Watching Vinny play through that part convinced me that I needed to play Dark Souls. Quit hatin' on the Tomb fools.

EDIT: Those clams are motherfuckers.

I beat Dark Souls this year, and the trick was having a friend watching with his laptop open telling you everything you need to know about the game the entire time. Way more enjoyable experience.

If you don't have a crazy friend like I do, just pay somebody for the service.

Anyways, I got to completely skip Lost Izaleth

Depending on who you have left to off then it could quite possibly get a lot worse. Since you fought Ornstein and Smough just now then the worst might be still ahead. Lost Izalith and Tomb of the Giants are absolutely dreadful levels. The area before 4 kings is also poor in design but at least interesting in terms of atmosphere. Man everything about Lost Izalith, fuck that.

Every Lord/Bequeathed Shard Boss has at least one section that is the utter shits.

Bed of Chaos - Lost Izaleth
Place is just meh. It's not that the enemies are particularly hard or that it's difficult to navigate, it's just meh. The bonfire placements are pretty shite as well, especially considering that Bed of Chaos is probably the worst boss in the entire game; I don't mean she's difficult, just that she's fucking unfair. I'm a seasoned Souls player with well over 350 hours logged into the game and I still cannot beat Bed of Chaos on a single attempt. She's just completely broken for melee players.

Gravelord Nito - Tomb of the Giants
The Tomb is cool if you have the skull lantern or the sunlight maggot; but you only get the maggot if you're a Chaos Servant. Fair Lady and Eingeyi are icky as fuck so screw that. The design of the Tomb is cool as is all of the little world building it does; but man fuck feral skeletons. Fuck them. Especially that one intersection where you've got three of them waiting to pounce and here comes this black knight with a halberd running up to shank you. I don't think the level is bad, but the enemy encounters are bullshit in a few spots.

Seath the Scaleless -Crystal Cave
I don't even - just, what? I can't imagine what kind of a nightmare this place was before they patched in the snowfall to hint at the invisible bridges. I mean, even that, just why the hell would they have an invisible bridge? What's the point? It's one of the handful of things in Dark Souls that just feels like... what? Why is that there? What purpose does this serve? There aren't any answers for that.

Four Kings - New Londo Ruins
I actually liked New Londo quit a bit, but I do agree with other players that say it's annoying. It's not because the level sucks, I don't think, but the combination of ghosts, utter darkness, Dickwraiths, and the fact that no bonfires in this area exist stack up for some pretty gnarly unfun. Corpse runs to the Four Kings are the worst not because of the distance but because of how much shit you need to get through to get back to the Abyss. If they had plopped a bonfire down somewhere (midway through the level or even at the entrance would be acceptable) I don't think people would hate on New Londo as much.

So yeah, the game does have some serious downsides after obtaining the Lordvessel, but I don't think they're worth quitting the game over. the Kiln and the final boss are pretty amazing to me, but that's because I'm Parry King. If you find yourself getting frustrated with any of these locations just warp out to do some farming or turn the game off for the night. Patience and a clear head will grant you victory. It's almost like these levels were designed to frustrate you into giving up.

Crystal Caves is great, Final Fantasy IV flashbacks ahoy!

Whenever you are feeling like Dark Souls is unfair, stop a second and think about the fact that there are people who have beat the game naked at SL1. This could either cause you to rage quit or redouble your efforts and get through the section that's giving you trouble.

That's not true. Donating 30 humanity to the Fair Lady just opens up the Lost Izalith shortcut to the Sunlight Maggot before Demon Firesage instead of making you fight your way through Firesage and the first half of Lost Izalith.

The only way to save Solaire is to be a Chaos Servant+2 so that you can open the shortcut and kill the Sunlight Maggot Chaos Bug before entering Lost Izalith the long/normal way (unless you kill it through the wall with something like Poison Mist), but being in the covenant has no impact on actually obtaining the item.

Anyway, @OP: Crystal Cave took me all of 10-15 minutes to clear on my first playthrough, so I don't really know what you're doing. Off the top of my head, I think it's the smallest and least-populated area in the game.

There's one thing I absolutely hate in Dark Souls: Traversal levels - either ones where you have to dodge traps (oh the joy of being knocked into an endless abyss) or have to find the right path (oh the joy of falling into an endless abyss). I just found the idea completely opposite to what makes the game so cool. I wish they had kept it as a side thing - something that if you master it, there are many cool special items collectable only from doing that; or something for set-piece moments like that tree boss thing (I forget its name) - but the way they made it into levels like the Crystal Caves destroyed a lot of my enthusiasm in the game.

It took me over 300 hours to finish my first play through, mostly due to my incompetence (although I did spend a long time looking at areas - I think the art direction is incredible despite the dirty textures). Levels like this, though, extenuated this by putting me in fights where one miss-step could lead to my death (or just not enough poise and a block at the wrong time will knock me back into an abyss).

If you're like me and think it is just a chore to go through: to the point that you start blocking yourself for trying at the level because you think, "but I'm just going to get to the boss and die and have to do it again" - and then in frustration you either stop playing or play so badly you never make it to the boss - My tip is this: get the Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring (it makes you almost silent to enemies) and if you can, the Ring of Fog as well (the pair together make you neigh-on undetectable) and then set yourself up in a way that you understand how to do the jumps with as best as possible (some might say that a light-weight character is better for this, but in actuality whichever build you usually play will suffice as you've probably got to know the jumps for that build) and then run through everything. Get to an intersection, find the path and run. If you fall or are killed just do it again immediately and memorize the path. Eventually you'll get to the boss but likely be ill-equipped to fight him. Use this as an opportunity to study his attacks. Then, when you likely die, set yourself up to be the same build-weight but equipped for the boss instead, and just run what you rehearsed and fight the boss.

Even a brute-force method like this will still be completable in an afternoon.

Personally, I love Lost Izalith. Such an intimidating level. Well, it used to be more intimidating in vanilla Dark Souls before those walking butts got seriously nerfed. The Bed of Chaos is unquestionably the shittiest boss by far though.

I didn't really mind the Crystal Caves but the small garden area at the entrance is probably the single most horrible looking spot in the game.

@cybertification: Do you have a divine weapon by any chance? Getting rid of those skeletons makes the fight almost trivial since Nito's so slow.

In case anyone is having trouble with the t-rex butts in (or just outside of?) Izalith, I just thought I'd mention that many of their attacks will damage other guys nearby. And since they don't respawn, you can clear them out a few at time by drawing them out with arrows then running into the middle of the bunch. In my first playthrough, I think more of those guys died to each other than to me.

Am I the only one that never aggro'd the butts? I ran through Izalith and they never even moved.

@cybertification: I just got past Nito myself. My mistake was rushing him early, which aggros the pair of Giant Skeletons masturbating behind him.

When the fight starts, move up enough to pull the little gangly idiots he summons, then wait there for Nito to come to you. He often attacks with his left, so if you can, keep to his right. Stay on him. Many times, his AoE attacks will dismember the skeletons temporarily, so if you're not using a divine weapon (even a Silver Knight weapon will put them down for good, for what it's worth), you'll have moments of respite to hit Nito with your full unabashed fury.

Get 'em, tiger.