So it's my second Sunday of playing Demon's Souls and I feel like I am slowly gaining some understanding of the game. I still don't really know much but I learned some hard lessons and those led to awesome triumphs! As the title says I took down both the Tower Knight and The Armored Spider after many many many hours of playing today.

So I started by taking a break from the Palace of Boleteria and deciding to delve around in Stonefang Tunnel for a bit. Found my sword to be very ineffective and realized I had a spear in my inventory. Using the spear worked much much better, it happened to be their weakness and also I realized I can have my shield up and still attack with a spear. This of course was learned through about 3 deaths before I started experimenting.

It wasn't long after discovering this, that a laughing man set me on fire and I realized heavy armor had encumbered me. Basically armor and weapons have weight and if you exceed half your maximum it slows down your run speed and drastically reduces your roll. Rolling is good my friends, rolling saves your life, once I got back into leather armor I was dodging that fire with ease!

My final lesson about the battle system was understanding how to use auto-targeting. While the bad part is it locks you into an enemy, the main benefit is you are always facing that enemy for shield and attack purposes. Now I was dealing damage consistently, blocking or rolling as needed, and basically tearing enemies apart. This also meant my arrows and bolts hit with much much more frequency!

These lessons combined allowed me to get close to the end of the first area of Stonefang Tunnel. I was doing great until BAM! At the end of the bottom tunnel was a giant fire-breathing spider. Too surprised to really do anything I kind of just died very quickly. Lost 2000+ souls on that little mistake and couldn't get them back as I died again when I tried to get back to my body. Still, I payed attention enough to see there were safe areas I could just pelt him with arrows from. So the next step was to get arrows.

I decided at this point to try the second area of the Palace of Boletaria, basically a castle wall where a dragon strafes and shoots fire across certain portions. I had given up before but now that I better understood the battle system I could run through and harvest souls to buy arrows for that damn spider! There were a few setbacks but I managed to be more cautious and spend my souls on arrows when I could so I wouldn't lose them.

Ironically while doing this I stepped through some fog into a boss battle with The Tower Knight, who is about as tall as 3 story building! I ran around the parapets around him to take out all the archers, can't be dodging arrows and fighting a giant knight at the same time. At first I grabbed a ledge and fired arrows at him, but the process was taking to long and wasn't very reliable. I didn't have enough arrows anyway, so I sucked it up and went to go toe to toe with him. I learned with the arrows that his feet were his weak points. So dodging his attacks, I rolled around his feet and attacked when I could. I almost beat him my first time but he fell on me with about one more strike of health to go and I died.

After much swearing and yelling at the TV I decided it was on, that I would beat this damn knight. It took 2 hours and 3 tries later but I conquered that bastard! Lots of rolling, healing when necessary, and patience really payed off. I cannot stress enough how on the ball you need to be with this game, you can't slop your way through it. Beating him was yet another awesome feeling, it is the release of massive amounts of tension and I think I am now hooked on the feeling.

After beating the Tower Knight I upgraded my character and had enough strength to use the Flame Shield, the increased fire resistance definitely came in handy for my next fight. Feeling cocky I ran into Stonefang Tunnel to take down The Armored Spider. At this point I had enough arrows that i found the safe place I noticed earlier and just shot it full of arrows till it died! That's two more demons down and definitely made me feeling like Demon's Souls is a surmountable tasks.

I decided to dig deeper into Stonefang Tunnel and entered an area where you have to drop down a mineshaft very carefully, catching yourself on little walkways. On the way down I met Scirvir, The Wanderer who is looking for a sword said to be able to kill dragons. After chatting with him for a bit I tried to go further down but couldn't seem to find the right way. Fell to my death like four times.

So I decided to end the days adventures with checking out the first area of The Tower of Latria, the prison of Hope. My friends magic enemies really really suck, especially when they look like weird Cthulu demons that can paralyze you then one hit kill you. Still I managed to wander around and open a few doors but then decided I didn't want to lose the 3000+ souls I had accumulated. So I popped back in the nexus, spent my souls, and decided I shall continue again next Sunday.

And so ends my adventures for the day in Demon's Souls. I learned a lot of hard lessons, died more times then I care to admit, and yet when I killed those two major demons I felt so damn good! I actually am enjoying the game and part of that I am sure is because I am an emotional masochists. In any case until next Sunday!