PixlBit

Dragon Aerie is definitely my favorite looking area of the game. Super cool artwork. Looks like all the arch-trees from DS1 are super ancient and petrified, so now they all just look like stone pillars reaching to the sky. Every aspect of DS2 seems to be about harkening back to the ancient days of Lordran and the countless evolutions that came inbetween then and now, and also the old Gods and magics that are now forgotten, and how things have decayed, aged, petrified, etc ever since.

Anyways, is it possible to kill the Ancient Dragon?

I completed Dragon Shrine last night and the critter at the end looks pretty cool. I'm going to try to kill him and see what happens. He's really big and mean looking but I'm practically Havel the fucking Rock reincarnated so I'm looking to pick fights with every thing in this game before it's over. I have Havel's armor +5, I have 50 Vitality so I can move fast while I wear it, I have the Drakewing Ultra Greatword +5, and I feel like my character was born to tear dragons some new assholes. I was beating the crap out of the wyverns in the Dragon Aerie.

The best design decision From Software made was bringing back Havel's armor for DS2. I started this game out trying to build a light armor rogue character and by the end of the game I have gone the complete opposite direction and I've ended up with the second-coming of Havel the Rock, I can't tell you had rad it feels.

The Ancient Dragon is a 'hidden' boss, in a sense.

He is definitely beatable, but he's incredibly tough since he's able to one-shot you no matter how much armor/fire defense you have. There is an easy way to conquer him though:

Start by running towards him and to the left, heading towards his back foot (His right foot, assuming you've aggro'd him already). Stand directly between his toes and hit him 2-3 times and wait from him to begin his stomping motion. Once he begins to stomp, roll in the direction of his other back foot while slightly rolling towards his tail at the same time. Stand between his toes and hit him 2-3 times again and wait from him to start his stomping motion, signaling for you to roll the same pattern towards his back left foot. As you're doing this, try to keep an eye on his head and make sure he doesn't breathe fire between his legs and insta-kill you (This move is rare). Just rinse and repeat for a while and his 'soul' will be yours. No spoilers, but his soul is... different.
Also, make sure you unequip all of your armor and shield, and double-hand you're weapon the entire time. Since he can instantly kill you no matter what, you're better off being able to move and dodge as quickly as possible!

I hope that helps you conquer him man! Good luck

Someone online found a Giant with a face.
Supposedly it's located in the Giant's Dream where you fight the Giant Lord, on a platform shortly before the boss. I'm going to try to investigate this asap tonight/tomorrow (Child pending lol)

Anyway, here's a screen cap of it. If anyone is able to confirm it before me, please post it here!

Kinda looks like a Xenomorph too..
Just saying..

It's the alright, kind of creepy in a way too. I now wonder if giants are able to hollow and the giants we've fought were actually hollowed giants? 

Interesting. 

That's really weird, I never considered the nature of the giants we see in the game. I knew they came from across the sea past the northern shore of whatever continent Drangleic is on, but that's about all. We know they have/had a king, they know combat, and they have wills of steel. I have too many questions so I'll try to keep it organized but you know how this goes, it'll probably be a mess for a while until we start to shake ideas out one by one.

We also know they had something that Vendrick and Nashandra wanted very badly, enough to invade the giant's land and steal it from them. What was it? Nashandra obviously had her own motives and was using Vendrick and the power of his kingdom to further her purposes by becoming Queen and exerting influence, but the question I have is how did the war with the giants further her cause, what "invaluable item" did they steal from the land of the giants? It was obviously important enough that the giants supposedly retaliated, invaded, and waged a war on Drangleic that lasted for multiple generations long. Captain Drummond said that his father fought the giants before him, and his grandfather before him. It definitely wasn't a blitzkrieg, it was a long sustained effort.

One of the mysteries I think is the wildest is that the soul of the Giant Lord mentions right off the bat that he invaded and conquered Drangleic. When did that happen, and how did Nashandra still end up on the throne in the world as we see it? Maybe it has something to do with the Throne of Want and how it supposedly "Shows the monarch what he/she wants to see." Are there illusions going on, or are there magical ret-cons happening by people using the Throne of Want to get what they "want". The idea that the giants won is crazy. I mean, it makes sense as they're practically unstoppable physically and on top of that they're relentless, but the way that things appear in Dark Souls 2 is that the giants were all but wiped out, experimented on, Vendrick coveted their power for himself and harnessed the power of giants, and Nashandra rules the ruins of the kingdom while Vendrick wander the Cypt as a hollow. It opens up a bunch of questions about the timeline of all these shenanigans, possible mixing of timelines, warping of time, the motives of people, and the magics that were involved in this story.

Since Chris asked the question about the giants we see possibly being hollow, I have a spin on that. What if that's true, maybe Vendrick and Nashandra invaded the giant's land, killed most or all of them, stole their ultimate prize, and came back to celebrate victory. The Duke's ghost in Drangleic Castle said that as Vendrick learned about the giant's secrets he learned to build the golems, and with the golems they built the castle as a way to celebrate victory. After their victory he (the Duke) said that the kingdom experienced a long quiet peace that was very much like "the Dark". So let's assume all of that happened, they somehow won a war with the living giants, experienced a long peace, and then sometime later an entire army of hollow giants gathered, came back across the sea, and surprised the kingdom and began their generations-long war in Drangleic. That would be wild, but it still doesn't explain how the Giant Lord conquered Drangleic but Nashandra ends up ruling over the ruins.

My theory on the game and the lore of Dark Souls II, assuming Drangleic is Lordran:

I've been doing a lot of wandering and wondering as of late, and this is the best I've been able to piece everything together. I feel like I'm missing one key piece to this entire Lore speculation though. It's hard to find a starting point to everything, so I'm just going to jump in to what I think Vendrick stole from the Giants. This has puzzled me for quite some time now, but I think I have it narrowed down to two things; either the Lord Vessel or the Petrified Dragon Egg. Now assuming that Drangleic really is the future of what was once Lordran, it's seemingly impossible to cross the seas and steal the Lord Vessel from the Giants whenever the Soul Vessel is already Lordran/Drangleic, leaving the only other item to be the Petrified Dragon Egg. Looking back on it, the Dragon Egg is really the only 'pristine' item in the game in a way when you think about it. Not only is it hidden away, it's also placed on a rather immaculate alter that was solely built to hold the egg, as if it was an item of great importance.

The next question though is; why steal a Petrified Dragon Egg?

Something I noticed early in the game was the mass amount of petrified enemies and NPCs. Later in the game, you see a very large Basilisk who more than likely petrified all of the Lion Warriors as well as the Pyromancy Merchant (I forget her name). While this isn't really a big deal so to say, it's also important because you find a few large Basilisks within a cage in Aldia's Keep. Why keep large Basilisks? To harness their power, of course. So where does the Dragon Egg fit in to this? If you found and examined the Dragon Torso Stone, the description reads:

A stone containing the strength of dragons. Transforms the body into a roaring dragon, an effect that will remain until death.
The Zealots who sought everlasting life are said to have conducted rites to imbue stones with the strength of dragons, but the truth of such claims is questionable

Going off of this and looking at the Dragon Egg:

A large petrified egg. Surely bears no life.
Eggs are vessels that harbor life itself, and symbolize the deepest secrets of existence. But what does a petrified egg harbor?

My Theory: He was using the Dragon Egg to give life to his Golems, who were made through petrification via the Basilisk research.

So where does Nashandra fit in to all of this?
If you read her Soul description as well as the descriptions for the items you can create with her Soul, you discover that she's actually a 'shard' of Manus, or the reincarnation of Manus. My hypothesis on her is that she wants to reach the Throne so she can usher in a new Darkness (cause she's a bitch), but she can't quiet reach it. Why? Because the Throne of Want is locked away behind a King's Door. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but I believe that Vendrick found out what she was up to at some point, and took the Lords Vessel and smashed it, and created the King's Ring from its remnants. If you look closely at a picture of the Lord Vessel from Dark Souls I and compare it to a picture of the King's Ring, you'll see that they both have similar symbols scribed upon them, not to mention that they both theoretically open the door to the Throne/Kiln. In my eye, she simply used you to seek out Vendrick and the Throne of Want so you could essentially pave the way for her to reach the Throne since she couldn't do so without the items, which were hidden away by Vendrick in the depths of the Crypt.

Hopefully this theory makes some sort of sense. To me, it does, but at the same time, I still feel like I'm missing one key piece to the theory as a whole...
Also, here's a pic of the Kings Ring and Lord Vessel (Destroyed in the Majula Mansion Basement) so you don't have to look all over, enjoy!

That all makes sense actually. I think the most logical conclusion is that he coveted the Petrified Dragon Egg from the Giants then. Remember how the ghost Duke as well as the Emerald Herald both say that Vendrick "peered into the essence of the soul"? The egg's description fits that perfectly because it harbors life itself and symbolizes the deepest secrets of existence.

The widespread evidence and use of petrification in the game is weird. Vendrick tried everything to fight the curse and solve the mysteries to life with his brother Aldia. Dragons are known to have been immortal, so what better way to seek a cure for a curse of undead than learn about the nature of the immortal dragons. The dragons had the "primordial crystal" which Seath stole from them when he defected. The crystal regenerated his health and you destroy it in his boss battle in DS1, so what role does stone play then? Is the stone on the dragons just for defense? How are crystals, stone, and eons later some petrified egg all connected? I don't know maybe it's all nonsense, I can't understand how dragons managed to live forever and what gave them their properties of life regen, stone scales, etc.

Let's look at the definition of petrification from wikipedia real quick:

"petrification is the process by which organic material is converted into stone through the replacement of the original material and the filling of the original pore spaces with minerals. Petrified wood is a common result of this process, but all organisms, from bacteria to vertebrates, can be petrified."

That makes me wonder about the nature of dragons in the Age of Ancients. It's said that the dragons the Lords fought were either made of stone or had stone scales, they specifically said Gwyn's lightning bolts were able to reel apart the stone scales. Did dragons go through the process of petrification? By the time the First Flame came the dragons were already immortal, they had the primordial crystal as well as stone scales. Seath didn't have scales, he was fleshy/organic (all dragons were probably like him then except with scales), and he obviously coveted the crystal he stole.

I'm really confused by the nature of dragons, I think there's tons of loopholes and the lore in much of Dark Souls seems destined to never make sense because pretty much everything inevitably points back towards dragons, and the dragon's lore is nonsense.

When you get the obsidian greatsword from Kalameet in DS1 it says he's the last of the ancient dragons. He's not, there's still the Everlasting Dragon (who is pretty small and fuzzy, is he a baby?) in Ash Lake who is a survivor from the Age of Ancients. Kalameet is mortal, you kill him and doesn't seem to have stone scales or a special crystal to regenerate health. The small Everlasting Dragon in Ash Lake can't be killed, why is that? Other NPCs and covenant leaders can be killed, and Gwyn killed tons of "immortal" dragons, they live forever as long as you don't kill them. So what's up with the baby in Ash Lake who appears to not have a crystal, doesn't look much like stone, and can't die?

We as players are looking for scraps of concrete rules and consistency to base our reasoning on and I don't think there are any in places, and it's probably for a variety of reasons. These are video games and things change, there's translation, there's a ton of detailed lore depending on minute grammatical differences and phrases in item descriptions. The smaller scale lore is super well-wrought and can spin webs of drama between individual characters and factions that are pretty amazing. But there seem to be areas where they haven't been very good. They have impeccable attention to detail at From Soft in a number of areas of DS lore, but I can't make sense of the dragons. Maybe they don't have a cohesive idea of the nature of their dragons and canon at From Soft either. It's like an area of the lore where they just continue to riff on it and see what sounds cool, as opposed to fleshing it out and seeing if it holds up with the rest of their world and previous game.

Maybe it's a situation where you can say, "We may be taking this too seriously." But I love taking it seriously lol. On the surface Dark Souls games are action rpgs, but under the skin they're detective games if you choose to dig into them, and I want to fit puzzle pieces together, come up with interpretations, and share ideas with people that are based on scraps of evidence. You can't do that with the dragons because there's not enough structure or consistency.

 So I bought the game on PC. Yay! That means I have to fight the Ruin Sentinals again. Boo. Seriously, fuck this fight. It doesn't feel fair. I mean, I legitimately don't think beating it is possible unless you summon. It's a completely bullshit boss that From should be ashamed of. I hated this boss the fist time I played, and I fucking despise it now.

 Also, wow. My review of this game is coming out surprisingly negatively. There is a lot of shit wrong with this game.

Took me a few tries, but I beat 'em solo. The key to my success was defeating the first guy on the perch (not too hard once you learn their pattern), then dropping and inflicting as much damage as possible to one Sentinel. After that, as long as you keep your shield up, you can wait out both their attacks and hit them when you either separate one from the other, or when both of them are in between moves at the same time.

After I figured it out, I actually threw down my summon sign and fought them for a couple of hours with others. Learned to really enjoy the fight for whatever reason.

Anyway, I agree that the game has some problems, but when all is said and done, I think I liked it as much as DS1. The frame rate improvements and the control improvements really make it tougher to go back to DS1 after the fact. The world design isn't quite as good, but I do enjoy the variety. All in all, I can't say that I have too many complaints because I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

 Don't get me wrong, I still adore this game. However, these are some things I noted:

 - Whoever decided to place enemies near bonfires is a dick.
 - Reused bosses and areas.
 - World doesn't feel alive like Dark Souls did. NPC's don't leave Majula, nor do they seem to have objectives or character arcs like they did in the original.
 - Inconsistent geometry. When you look at Earthen Peak from Harvest Valley, where the hell is the Iron Keep? Why is it that Harvest Valley is a swamp with an overcast sky, yet when I get to Iron Keep the sky is now red and I'm surrounded by lava? How the hell is No Man's Wharf sea level yet I'm in a cave above the sea?

- Enemy tracking is bullshit.

- WHY ARE THE REWARDS FROM THE CROWS RANDOMISED?!

That's how I felt about the Belfry Gargoyles, that's a really shitty boss fight that feels unfair and is extremely tough for me to do without summons. I remember you saying you got through them really easily and it made you feel kinda smart.

I got through the Ruin Sentinels in two attempts, didn't make me feel smart though. Ruin Sentinels are mechanically pretty monotonous to fight, and they do huge damage if you let them get a hit in. They are somewhat slow and easy to predict. If you can take out the first guy, then drop down to take on the last two it's much easier. There's more than enough room to run around and dodge attacks in that room with the two remaining sentinels. It's not a story spoiler so I'll go ahead and say that if you hate the sentinels you will definitely hate Drangleic Castle. You come across six ruin sentinels in one room, but you can take them on one at a time if you want, or avoid them altogether, making it easier. Once you get to that stage in the game, fighting the ruin sentinel type of enemies is easy as long as you manage your stamina and have a 100% physical defense shield. They make big obvious attacks, and you can strafe around back of them most of the time, get in two light attacks, block, strafe, repeat, and grind them down.

I finished the game and was pretty satisfied and impressed with a variety of things, but there's some non-spoilery stuff I need to gripe about. The console versions are ugly as can be, the PC version and console versions seem like they're night and day. I love the art and variety in the game, especially the colors of the sky in Heide's Tower of Flame and the forest landscapes at the end of Aldia's Mansion. But the technical presentation is super nasty overall in the console ports. Awful textures, a permanent depth of field effect that only serves to make things in the distance look even shittier, and even certain parts of the skybox that seem unfinished. There's places in Dragon Aerie, Lost Bastille, and some other areas where if you look out to the mountains and coastline you'll see textures and flat sharp geometry that are clearly unfinished or just sacrificed in order to help performance.

Dark Souls 2 is very satisfying to me functionally and systemically, and it ended up having enough lore for me to bite into and have interesting discussions about so far, all while being surprisingly ugly, frustrating in some of the bad boss designs, and kind of a straight-up bad game in some areas. The entire Shrine of Amana section could be cut from the game and I wouldn't miss it. Who the fuck thought the Shrine of Amana was a fun idea? If you haven't been there yet Blake, you will, and it blows. It's slightly frustrating, a little bit time consuming, but more than anything it's the most boring and unenjoyable area I've seen by far in either of the Dark Souls games.

The highs are pretty high in DS2, but the lows are fucking low.

Enemies near bonfires is a fuckload of shit. That did actually piss me off a lot and there was no reason for it whatsoever. I agree with Michael regarding Shrine of Amana. That place is absolutely terrible and they make it a super obnoxious area if you are a straight-up melee character.

I'll also agree about the ugliness. I'm currently in a DS1 quest and it definitely looks better than DS2. But man, DS1's frame rate is so much shittier and you feel so tanky (compared to DS2) no matter how light your build is. But, yes, the DS2 world geometry is totally wacked and so much worse than DS1. It doesn't seem to bother me like it does other people (I like that they tried something more horizontal than vertical this time), but none of it makes sense when you put it all together.

Regarding the bosses, I didn't struggle very much with any of them, really. I honestly thought the bigger problem was that there were too many of them and many were too similar. It felt like From was a bit too eager to put a boss behind every fucking fog gate you ran across in the game, which got a little out of hand. As a result a lot of the bosses felt pretty uninspired (or were out and out reused).

DS2 is a great game that I loved a lot, but I could never shake the feeling that it felt more like an expansion than its own game. Not sure why that was, but it haunted me throughout my quest. It wasn't until I started hitting the very end parts of the game that it felt like it had finally taken on its own personality and became a unique entity. I'm eager to go back through it to see how it feels on a second playthrough, because that'll really bring some clarity about how exactly I feel about the game.

I agree with all of that. There were some bosses I really enjoyed like the Executioners Chariot, Dual Dragonriders, the Giant Lord, there's actually several that I enjoyed doing with my melee build. I almost always got a huge sense of pride after beating bosses in DS1. In DS2 I found that feeling lacking in most of the game I guess. I really loved it overall and it feels good to play, I love the streamlined equipment upgrading, the fast traveling, the encumbrance/movement speed solution they used, the framerate is great, the feel of combat is pretty dang solid, but if I'm being honest I didn't feel particularly proud of my journey. It wasn't an easier game either, DS2 was tough as shit, it just didn't get me high on victory very much.

Who knows, maybe if this was my first Souls experience I'd feel differently? All us Dark Souls buffs here at Pixlbit have played a lot of Souls, every Souls buddy I have has played a ton of Souls before. I wonder what the game was like for people playing a Souls game for the first time.

Fun fact, I spent 80 some hours in my first playthrough of this game, and only used the parry twice. Used the backstabbing a lot less than DS1 as well. Combat was fun but at the same time felt way more limiting and less varied. I thought my melee build was pretty awesome, but if I'm being honest I almost feel like I was forced into my melee build out of necessity. I wanted to make a light armor rogue with with a longsword and bow, but I ended up with a tank using Havel's armor, greatshield and a greatsword. The game doesn't do a good job of making magic, pyromancy, or bowcraft seem very useful or appealing. It was 40 hours before I found a second bow in the game, and even that bow wasn't that great.

 No, it's nothing to do with firsts. I played Dark Souls and then went back to Demon's Souls. I constantly felt satisfied.

Also, what you said brings up another problem: item placement. Once I got the Fire longsword very early in the game, I felt no need to use anything else for literally AGES.

I actually enjoyed the Shrine of Amana.  By the time I got there I was strong enough that all the enemies were really easy for my melee build and it was the only place I found with enemies that consistently dropped twinkling titanites. Prior to fighting the boss, I ran back and forth from the beginning to the end over and over again, picking up a couple dozen twinkling titanites along the way.

On the contrary; I'm running around with a high Faith build right now and I'm absolutely wrecking this game man. Faith is by far the most powerful of the builds I've seen in DS2. I'm damn near able to 2-shot the Sentinels in Drangleic Castle right now, and I'm absolutely destroying people in Belfry Sol.

I think I'm going to start a new character and make either Faith build or Intelligence build. That will be new for me, I never even made a magic build of any kind for Dark Souls 1 either. I've been hearing all over the place that magic is better in DS2 and it's super powerful when you know what you're doing.

What equipment have you been using for your Faith build? I want to make Gwyn basically, could you help me out? Light or medium armor, lightning spells, healing, probably a greatsword with good faith scaling. I'm not exactly sure what I should be looking for since I've never done magic in a Souls game. I want to check out what all this buzz around Faith is and see if I can make a super powerful Gwyn type character that wrecks things with lightning magic, a greatsword, and a nice shield. Are chimes what you use for Faith magics?

Here's the way I made my Faith Build. This may be a bit long-winded (Seems natural any time I speak of Dark Souls anymore lol), but it should definitely get you going in the right direction!

Naturally when you start, create a Cleric so you instantly have Chime, Healing Spell, and a decent weapon. When you get to Majula; head towards the Heidi Tower of Flame and pick up the shield in the stairwell real quick, then turn back. The best part about being a Faith-based character is the fact that your weapons scale to Fire and Lightning very well now, so as soon as you begin, head to the Forest of Fallen Giants and make the run for the Fire Longsword asap. As soon as you get that, back-track slightly, and kill the Heide Knight and claim the Heide Knight Sword (Lightning Damage ftw!) so you start the game with two weapons that scale according to your highest stat (which will be Faith).

Now that you have two great weapons to start with, head back to Majula and down in to Heide Tower of Flame. Kill the Dragonrider Knight (You can cheese him by pulling NO levers, waiting for him to take 7 steps forward, and running past him TO THE RIGHT. He'll attack and throw himself off the ledge for an easy win), and head upstairs to find Licia of Lindeldt. Use your Souls and buy Lightning Spear from her; this will be your primary spell until you're able to get more Lightning Spears (She sells unlimited Spears once you hit Drangleic Castle, I bought 5 and had 96 charges!) and/or stronger Lightning Spears.

That's pretty much how I started the game, and the basic starting equipment carried me along the way for quite a while. As you progress onward towards the Iron Keep (go there before any of the other four Great Souls), be sure to trickle some stats in to Strength and Dexterity. You'll need 20 Str., and 11 Dex. to make this work, but pick up the Dull Ember at Iron Keep and make your way back to Lost Bastille and buy 2 Bastard Swords and imbue one with Fire and one with Lightning. These weapons will carry you through the rest of the game without any problems and they have great scaling for Fire/Lightning Damage.

As for Chimes, simply keep grabbing the Chime that scales best for Lightning damage and level it up. The beginning Cleric's Sacred Chime should carry you for a while, but you'll eventually find a Priest's Chime in a chest within the Lost Bastille and it will easily carry you throughout the rest of the game. For armor; I used the starting equipment for a while, then the Drangleic armor and whatever else I could fit accordingly without burdening myself until I found my much beloved Llewylln Armor set. My basic rings were normally: Clear Bluestone Ring (increased casting speed), Third Dragon Ring (higher HP, stamina, equip burden), Cloranthy Ring (faster stamina regen), and the Sunlight Covenant Ring (higher faith spell damage).

If you want Uber-damaging Lightning Spears, make sure you join the Sunlight Covenant asap and start grinding away some Sunlight Medals. Rank 3 (30 medals) will land you the best Lightning Spear in the game, and its damage potential is absolutely incredible. Also; make sure you pick up all 3 castings of Great Lightning Spear. You can find one of the in The Pit (Using Laddersmith Gilligan and Forgotten Key), another casting within The Pit, and the third is sold by Straid in Lost Bastille, near Sinners Rise.

So now that equipment and the basic starting tutorial are done, onward to stats!
Naturally, Faith and Attunement were my primary concerns, so these are naturally going to be your highest stats. As I mentioned earlier, I trickled some stats in to Strength and Dexterity to the point of being able to efficiently wield the Bastard Sword. I rarely ever put any points in to Endurance, Vigor, and Vitality, and I offset this by using the Second/Third Dragon Rings to bolster my Health, Stamina, and Equipment Load. By the time I was ‘done’ allocating Stats, I think I had 16 Vigor, 16 Endurance, 8 Vitality, 50 Attunement, 20 Strength, 11 Dexterity, 5 Adaptability, 20 Intelligence, and 60 Faith, all in all placing me around level 160 or so.

The reason I placed some stat points into Intelligence was to bolster my Fire weapon even further as well as my Pyromancy since Fire scales to both Intelligence and Faith. Also; for the record, Attunement not only increases spells allocation slots, but it now increases your casting time as well as the amount of charges per spell!

I hope this helps man!

Okay, I've got two places to go. I can either go to the Doors of Pharros or to the Grave of Saints. I am mostly a melee build who is also decent at magic. Which do you recommend?

Either way you're fucked with Rat-bros.

Personally, I'd suggest the Grave of Saints since it's relatively quicker to get through the Rat-bro area. It's really a toss-up based on a coin-flip; meaning either way may be a struggle, connection pending.

Both paths lead towards old one souls that you need to progress, more or less.

Grave of Saints can be avoided altogether if you want, you can head further down the pit in Majula and head straight for The Gutter. If you talked to Gilligan in Earthen Peak and made him move to Majula he can make you a ladder that takes you right to The Gutter entrance pretty much. You have to go through Gutter to get to Black Gultch, where you'll find the next great soul. Grave of Saints was mostly useless for my melee build, I can't remember finding anything useful in there. Grave of Saints is mostly a covenant area like the belltowers are I think, and the boss battle with the rat swarm can be a serious pain in the ass. If you want to check out that covenant and see what it's all about, I guess that's  the only reason to go there.

I'd recommend going down the pit in Majula, making it to The Gutter and then Black Gultch and getting those two out of the way. Combined, they're basically DS2's version of Blighttown. They're frustrating the first time you go through but luckily, even combined, they're much shorter than Blighttown was, and the framerate is much better than Blighttown's is. Just make sure to have a lot of torch time saved up. It's dark down there, but there's tons of sconces to light if you want to shed some light on the situation in The Gutter. If you have a greatshield that does strike damage like the Tower Shield, you can equip your shield in your right hand. So while your holding your torch with the left hand, you can defend yourself against hollows, mummies, poison darts, and strike people when they get close.

Once you're done with those stupid dark poisonous places and have the great soul, you could go to Doors of Pharros. That area is much more fun for a melee build, you can fight Mastodon Knights and Gryms. The Grym greatshield is pretty nice if a Grym warrior drops one for you.

Oh ok. I went through the doors of pharros to Brightstone Cove lol.

Do you guys have any insight on the lore of where fragrant branches of yore come from and why they have the ability to unpetrify living things? That seems like the kind of substance that would be a keystone of Aldia and Vendrick's research, but as far as I can tell nobody ever talks about fragrant branches or makes a big deal out of them in the game. But in the context of the lore in DS2, they seem like they'd be one of the biggest deals imaginable. Couldn't the properties of fragrant branches of yore be used to unpetrify the dragon egg(s) and bring to life the shit inside, or unlock the deepests secrets to life that they supposedly hold? I'm still going off the assumption that the dragon eggs are what Vendrick and Nashandra crossed the ocean to steal from the giants. The guy who runs the dragon remnants covenant in Iron Keep sells one branch for a fairly expensive price, but other then that people don't seem to care about them. The fact that the dragon man has one might say something.

Oo look. Dark soles, 2. Ba ha ha ha.