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Just realised that I had totally forgot about Havel back in Undead Burg. Finished him off and found the back route into Darkroot Basin and Valley of the Drakes which should keep me occupied for a while whilst I gain levels, weapon strength and the moral courage to go back to those two arseholes in Anor Londo. Might have another go at Old Londo ruins as well.

That's one of the beautiful things about this game, that you can get really frustrated about one part of the game and the remember that there was some path you abandoned hours back whose foes you are now ready for, or even happily overpowered against.

I tell you all though, I can't imagine playing this game without being able to ask for help from other players and wikis. I am going to grab Dark Souls 2 right on release day and I imagine that will be a very different story. Interesting, in that you can be part of the conversation all the new, intrepid explorers are undertaking, but also scary because there will be no definitive help until the mass of player experiences uncover the mysteries.

It is interesting that when I look on some of the forums on DarkSoulsWiki etc you can see that there is a lot of misinformation and conjecture in the discussions around the release window and it is only the later posts where the information is more definitive. I really hope that in an attempt to make the game more accessable they don't start explaining too much about the mechanics and structures of game up front. I would prefer they made the game easier than removed the mystery, although there is no need to do either even though some of the boss fights make me want to break the controller over my skull. One of the great things for me about Dark Souls has been the way it doesn't follow the rules, structures and expectations of modern gaming. In a lot of modern games the only uncertainty for the player is how the plot will play out and what the game will look like, everything about control, structure and progression is comforting and familiar. Dark Souls shares a lot of the basic ideas of modern gaming but by leaving the player to unpick how everything works makes the game that much more mysterious and exciting.

How was it for those of you who got the game on day one? Did it make it much harder? If you had played Demon's Souls did this make a difference?

@jacksukeru @ravenlight @mentaldisruption @mordeaniischaos Thanks guys I didn't think anyone would give me a tip which magically made it all easy but nevermind.....

Also I have the chance of upgrading my Iaito +5 to a Chaos weapon. What would you do? Have you used Chaos, I understand it gets more powerful depending on how much humanity you are using. Is it better than sticking to the Fire upgrade path?

@superwristbands @jacksukeru @tobbrobb @mordeaniischaos I think I might have hit a bit of a wall. I am stuck at the Boss fight in Anor Lando. Basically I either fight at <25%encumberance so I can nip about in +3 Shadow Armour with a Fire Iaito x5. Or sometimes I go heavy with a basic Havel or Stone armour and +3 Black Knight Sword. I am about level 60 with 18 dex 20 strength. However this fight is proving impossible with either build. Also I can never find anyone to summon into the battle for this boss fight and this has really helped with previous enounters- any tips? I really don't want to give up but it is getting mad frustrating. Do I need to grind? What were your experiences with this boss?

I think you just hit the nail on the head. This is exactly what it is like. People can say what they like about the personalities of the LP'ers selling the videos, but without the original content from the game producers no-one would be watching these videos. The best you could say is that Nintendo et al, is that they could maybe cut some deals with the best and most popular LP'ers and give them some revenue if they think the promotion is worth it.

However they aren't removing the videos, everyone who wants to continue making these videos as a labour of love can do so, but you cannot expect to make money using someone else's content. Its not right morally or legally.

I think its almost time to go into full black-out mode - this is shaping out to be amazing and I want to spoil as little as possible. Also kind of wish they had waited until next gen so all these features could be given there full reign. Oh well just have to wait until Fallout 4 for some next-gen open-world crazyness.

The constant retooling and changing of this game could either be really promising or really bad. My bet is somewhere in the middle ;)

@mordeaniischaos: Ugh, I have to go to bed and I spent ages sending you political rubbish instead of reading closely the post that really matters - will have to check in detail tomorrow. What I will say is that it sounds as if we have a very simillar style of playing games. It always takes me ages, my ME2 playthrough time was probably about the same as yours once you take off all the times I dozed off in bed with a controller in my hand at 4 in the morning.

Anyway just found a Katana type thing which looks nifty but my dex is too low at the mo. Might see how this is once I can use it properly, I like the ninja/knight thing I have going at the moment. I'm a bit stuck in Blighttown at the moment. Can see places to get to but they are either over a swamp which poisons me or down a big drop - i'll figure it out tomorrow.

@mordeaniischaos: I'm scared to get into a argument on Iraq because I don't want to fall out and I think we so fundamentally and monumentally disagree, but I will say a few things. Don't take the shortness of my post as lack of respect, i'm just sat up in bed and want to get back to Dark Souls. But....

The Second Iraq war was never a war about removing a tyrant. It was entirely sold war to remove the threat of Sadams WMD which turned out to be non-existent and wildly overexaggerated. The guff about removing tyrants and bullies is just weak excuse to hide the fact that the original story was at best a huge mistake and at worst and outright lie.

Sure people were celebrating on the day, but now....There are car bombs going off daily, all infrastructure has collaspsed to way below what it ever was when Sadam was in power, the country is riven by ethnic and religious strife and the political system is in chaos. It is a moot point as to whether things are really much better and if you ask the average Iraqi what they think now, rather than pick one day out 7 or whatever years ago you get a much better picture of exactly how useful the invasion was.

You also talk about stability - show me where is more stable because of US and GB involvment in those Iraq and Afganhistan. The border with Pakistan is close to being a warzone and the destruction and misery brought to that country has been greatly amplified by the coalition forces there. Iraq was very stable under Saddam - a situation the US and UK are normally very keen on as evidenced by their support of dictators throughout the 20th Century - as long as suit our foreign policy needs we are happy to install creeps like Pinochet, Mobutu, Mubarak even get behind Ghadaffi if he tows the line.

You also drop in the old canard about Sadam harbouring the terrorists who had a part in 9/11. This is completely untrue. Sadam was ruthless in removing any sign of Islamic fundamentalism and terror from his country because it was a direct threat to his rule. As far as I am aware non of the 9/11 bombers had links to Iraq.

The US needed to react to 9/11 I totally understand that, and I can see an argument for going into Afghanistan, even though it seems to have been done with typical lack of sensitivity and care. Iraq on the other hand just seems pointless strategically - no threat, no terrorists and no WMD and was a complete disaster in terms of planning, nation building - anything other than just defeating the raggedy Iraqi army who didn't want to fight anyway and stringing Saddam up on a rope.

Whether or not the troops coming home felt they did a good job is irelevant to all intents. I don't doubt that a lot of good men and women went over there and tried to do their best, but hundreds of thousands died because of lies and incompetence to build the current reality. A well-run country albeit with a brutal dictator and his death squads, has been exchanged for a crumbling broken state beset by terrorism and religious death squads.

Getting the coalition to fight for freedom in your country is like getting someone to fix a leak in your kitchen who instead of fixing it knocks down your whole house and says, 'OK - you can build something beautiful from here.'

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To the other point you make about the conscription argument, its more that I think that if everyone in the country had an equal stake in the risks that going to war entailed there would be a lot more debate and a lot more reticence to throw our weight around the world. I think the Iraq war would have been less likely to happen because the people with more voice and sharper elbows would have questioned more closely what the point of this misadventure actually was. Much the same in as when conscription actually started in Vietnam there was suddenly a much bigger outcry with protests starting at universities etc. By then it was a little too late, but if it was conscription all the way it might have been a different story. Does that make sense?

By the way I also think the recruitment process is unfair, but what you have told me has made me think a lot more closely about what the relationship is between societal status and potential recruitment.

@mordeaniischaos: That is a pretty hefty set of tips. Its thinking I expect of a man who wants to plan adventures and battles for real :). At the moment I am not really sure how I want to play and I think I might be 'winging it' as you say. Sometimes I will try and get my weight under 1/3 so I can move quickly, and the rest of the time I just kind of block and then swipe and see what happens. At the moment I am making my way through Blightown and have just found a load of really, really light armour that makes me look a bit like a ninja so I am wearing that.

I am also slighty worried that I might be getting too attached to my Drake Sword and want to find another weapon which I can feel as comfortable with, but the only thing close I have is a Battle Axe which is now +7 but it feels a little sluggish compared to the Drake.

What I will say is that I am so pleased I finally gave this game a try. For tension, satisfaction and a feeling of acheivement nothing comes close - oh and for frustration as well. I spent three nights trying to kill one boss and the feeling of having to turn the computer off having achieved nothing in 3 hours play for the second night in a row is, well, i'm sure you've been there. To make it worse, I lost all the souls I got form that boss straight afterwards from being careless.

I also worry that it is taking me ages to play it. I am about 40 hours in and have done Undead Burg, Parish, The depths and am in Blighttown. I have also had some pretty big diversions into the place with the ghosts and the underground garden - how does this compare for time on your first playthrough. Not that it matters so much - I was just interested?

@mordeaniischaos: That's some really interesting stuff, thanks for digging that out for me, certainly the base pay in the army is less than I expected it to be.

However it is a desirable job (although I don't remember using the word desirable - might be wrong though and reading my old posts pains me) depending on what your current circumstances are. If you have shitty grades, and live in a place with no steady blue-collar work, then any job with reliable pay, health insurance, pension etc is going to look quite good. I never said its easy money, I don't think that for a moment. I realise that army work is bastard hard. - But that table was an interesting read and like I said less than expected - although I suppose that doesn't include whatever perks they maybe offering.

As I mentioned in my last post, it maybe that things are changing a little and the armies of the past whose ranks were stuffed with the poorest and least well-off in society are slowly becoming less relevant and useful. This maybe especially so in a counties like the US and UK whose warfare is more and more based around technology and specialisation, and whose populations are growing ever leery of committing scores of their young men (and now women) to early graves. I still think that if we had much fairer and more equal societies it would be much harder to fill our ranks unless we were fighting wars which really, truly did threaten our national interests. I say again that a nation whose army was filled through a common interest and shared beliefs would not have fought pointless wars like Vietnam and Iraq. I think it in some way helps war-mongering governments and the elites who profit from their actions to have a class of people they can easily recruit. Much like the jails full of drug dealers and addicts on pointless long sentences whose incarcaration fuels a whole section of the economy (think prison guards, building jails, police, lawyers etc) it can be that sometimes keeping a certain section of society marganalised can be profitable and useful elsewhere.

But it has been interesting talking to someone who knows some detail and has actual experience as it always helps to add subtlety and depth to the discussion and it has made me realise that the situation is not quite as clear cut as my friend was talking about. But then I suppose I shouldn't expect subtlety from and old ex-communist. Incidentally I hear that getting a job as a fireman is actually pretty damn hard, I think over here it is really over-subscribed and I imagine at $5k a month there must be people banging down their doors in the US as well.