Previously on Dark Souls: I made my way out of the tutorial and was subsequently slaughtered by skeletons.
There were two ways out of Firelink Shrine. The first was through an area that looked like a graveyard. It was inhabited by skeletons that were way out of my league, so I had no choice but to see what was down the other path. Or, up the other path, as it were. This trail was a staircase up to a rather precarious ledge of land with a straight wall of stone on the left and an endless-looking drop on the right.
The staircase route was loaded down with zombies. These fellow undead weren’t nearly as tough as the skellingtons, but they were still perfectly capable of killing me if I let my guard down for even a moment. Heck, they were perfectly capable of killing me even when my guard was up, as I quickly learned when one of the zombies atop a flight of steps started pelting me with firebombs. You Died.
Collecting my souls, I learned to lure the zombies on the cliffside to me one at a time so I could take them out more easily. The ones at the top of the steps were still going to be a hassle, as I’d have to dodge the firebombs as I ran up to engage them. Trouble is, Dark Souls’ controls are a little finnicky and take some getting used to. And that’s how I ended up plummeting into the great unknown. You Died.
Checkpoints in Dark Souls are bonfires. Resting at a bonfire will initially refill your health and Estus Flask (healing kajigger), and allow you to spend your souls on level-ups. It will also respawn any enemies you’ve killed. So I ran back and forth between the bonfire and the zombie cliff many times before I made it up the stairs and across the skywalk/aqueduct spanning the chasm, finally reaching the Undead Burg after a good half hour.
The Undead Burg is just what it sounds like: a city filled with zombies. There are little paths here and there, but it’s a fairly straight shot from the entrance to the boss. By this point I’d gotten fairly adept at dispatching regular zombies, so of course the game would throw in archer zombies and spearman zombies to make sure I didn’t get complacent. The lucky part is that the spear zombies are mostly off the critical path, and the archers leave nice long gaps between shots.
Getting to the bonfire in the Burg wasn’t overly challenging. In fact, I made it that far quite swiftly and without any deaths. It was the stretch between the bonfire and the boss door that caused trouble. Firstly, there’s a bridge that you have to run across while zombies up above pelt you with firebombs. Of course, the first time I tried going across I had no idea they were there. You Died.
The second time around, I made it across the bridge, but was greeted with a room where three zombies were chilling. Up until this point, enemies could be handled one at a time. That wasn’t really the case here. You Died.
Passing that room eventually leads you to a staircase with two spearman zombies at the bottom. The spearmen aren’t technically that much harder than a regular zombie, but they have two advantages: they hit hard, and they’re really good at using their shields. And if you hit the shield, you’re very likely to take a spear to the face, and spears hurt. You Died.
Collecting my souls, I decided to venture out to another rooftop near the bonfire. The many features of this rooftop include a pair of spearmen. And this is where I learned to kick. Somehow. I guess I must have done it by accident at first, but by some stroke of luck I discovered the kick command, and how it will break a blocking enemy’s guard. It makes the spear zombies really easy.
There’s also a staircase on that roof that leads down to a balcony where a merchant lives. The only thing I bought from him was chain mail armor, as Morgan’s defense was seriously lacking and I wasn’t comfortable enough with the most basic game mechanics to start buying and playing with items that had fairly vague descriptions.
Eventually, and after a few more instances of seeing the You Died screen, I made my way up a tower at the end of the Undead Burg. There, I found a Fog Gate, which the one nice thing Dark Souls does: it’s an unmistakable warning that you’re about to encounter a boss. This boss was the Taurus Demon, essentially a really big minotaur.
The first fight with the Taurus Demon went about as well as you can imagine. I started walking across the empty rampart, wondering what was going to happen. Then arrows started raining down from the battlement behind me. I started to run away, and then the Taurus Demon fell from the sky and crushed me. Between the arrows and his huge axe, I panicked and got pounded to a pulp. You Died.
The biggest problem now was that my bubble of lost souls was stranded inside the boss arena, so the only way I could reclaim it would be to get there and then defeat the boss. If I died anywhere else, all those souls would be lost forever, so I was pretty set on finding a way to defeat the Taurus Demon.
I worked my way back up the tower, and to the boss’ room. I immediately turned around and climbed the ladder up to the battlement where the archer zombies were waiting for me, and took them out before triggering the boss’ entrance. Not having to worry about those arrows was a great boon in the fight, but in the end I learned an important lesson: he can break your guard and stagger you very quickly if you spend too much time defending. And that, in most cases, will be fatal. You Died.
I tried it again, remembering to lower my shield when I wasn’t actually trying to block an attack, so that my stamina would replenish faster. That helped, but it wasn’t enough. You Died.
And again. You Died.
You Died.
You Died.
It was around this point that I declared the Taurus Demon too hard for me, and put Dark Souls down for what could have just as easily been forever.
Tune in next week for Part 3: Big Bullies.
