{"id":3949,"date":"2014-01-02T08:00:57","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T13:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=3949"},"modified":"2014-01-02T15:18:02","modified_gmt":"2014-01-02T20:18:02","slug":"dark-souls-ring-that-bell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=3949","title":{"rendered":"Dark Souls: Ring That Bell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Previously on Dark Souls<\/strong>: Morgan cut her way through the knights and zombies infesting the Undead Parish, and was cut down herself by the Bell Gargoyles.<\/em><\/p>\n

Since she’d been carrying a small wealth in souls and more than a handful of humanity points, Morgan was a little ticked at that stunt that the Bell Gargoyles had pulled. Dying again would be a terrible loss, so it was time to see what could be done about her fire resistance, since it was that fire breath that really caused a problem.<\/p>\n

There weren’t many options though. None of the equipment in her inventory offered much in the way of fire resistance, and the one merchant in the Undead Burg didn’t sell anything better. It looked like all that could be done at the time was to start grinding for souls and use them to level up a bit. The souls requirements for level ups had gotten fairly high for what enemies were dropping, so that wasn’t even really a reasonable solution.<\/p>\n

The only real choice on the table was to buck up and attack the gargoyles again. Surely, if I could keep my distance from one, I’d be able to deal with the other. That strategy didn’t work so well, as the gargoyles decided to stay as close together as possible, and Morgan’s body was reduced to a pile of ash even faster than the last time. You Died<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Feeling lucky, I ran upstairs to challenge the Bell Gargoyles a third time. It went pretty much as bad as it could have. I got backed into a corner as soon as the second gargoyle flew in, and Morgan ended up getting well done yet again. You Died<\/span>. Really, it was either that have her jump off the roof to her death.<\/p>\n

Annoyed at how skillfully the gargoyles were roasting me, I decided to meander around for a while, hoping to stumble upon a path that I hadn’t been down yet. It wasn’t an overly successful journey, but I did wrangle up enough souls to buy a couple levels. Not that they would make an appreciable difference.<\/p>\n

I also picked up a humanity point in my travels, and I decided on a whim to use it to become a human again. It doesn’t mean a lot in offline mode, but it’s not like I was going to use that humanity for anything else. I returned to the ladders leading up to the parish’s roof, and noticed something different<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On the floor in front of the Fog Gate was a glowing etching. It prompted me to “summon” something, so I went ahead and did so. Just like that, a phantom of Solaire, the man I’d met after defeating the Taurus Demon appeared out of nowhere and pledged to fight by my side for a while. This was an interesting turn of events.<\/p>\n

The Bell Gargoyles had no idea what hit them. The fools seemed to forget I was even there and focused all of their attacks on Solaire while I stabbed them in the backs repeatedly. As the second gargoyle uttered its death moan, Solaire’s phantom vanished without so much as a wave and the door to the bell tower opened.<\/p>\n

I ascended the tower and rang the bell. I guess that was my objective this whole time? To be honest, it’s been so long since I started the game that I’d totally forgotten what my\u00a0goal was.<\/p>\n

I took the shortcut elevator back to Firelink, and assuming that my work over in the Undead Burg was done, I steeled myself for a return trip to the graveyard. The skeletons were waiting for me, waving around their scimitars menacingly. They weren’t as tough as I remembered, but maybe it was just that I’d gotten more skilled. Nevertheless, they still forced me to use up roughly half of my Estus Flask’s contents.<\/p>\n

I explored the graveyard, busting up skeletons and frisking corpses for loot. I didn’t find anything that seemed immediately useful, and had to make a few return trips to the bonfire before I’d cleared the graveyard of is shiny item markers.<\/p>\n

The skeletons were starting to seem manageable when I came across the Giant Skeleton. He was a monster, and had an attack that not only sapped most of my stamina, but also broke my guard and did roughly 50% of my HP in damage. I fought tooth and nail against the big bonehead, and eventually won, but was left in a very critical state. If anything had assaulted me at this point, I would have bit it for sure.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After healing up, I sped through the graveyard to a cavern at the other end. I descended into the cave and discovered the Catacombs area. It was nearly pitch-black, and I was immediately accosted by a skeleton. As I was blocking his strikes, I noted something glowing in the distance. Whatever it was let out a shriek and a massive fireball whizzed at me. The skeleton took the fireball in the back and shattered to bits.<\/p>\n

I took shelter behind a wall and waited for something to happen. The glowing thing didn’t reappear, but something else did. I noticed the skeleton’s bones, laid out across the cavern’s floor, begin to vibrate and then reassemble<\/em>. It put it’s head back on, looked my way, and then lept forward to swing its sword. I blocked the attack and shattered the skeleton again. After a few seconds, the skeleton began to reassamble itself again.<\/p>\n

Totally freaked out, I tried to run deeper into the catacombs to escape the immortal skeleton, following a round staircase around the edge of a bottomless-looking pit. I reached a small plateau at the end, and in the inky blackness it seemed to drop off into more nothingness. A skeleton that was hiding behind the wall struck me in the back, and as I tried to fight back, the first skeleton showed up and the two of them overwhelmed me. You Died<\/span>.<\/p>\n

I ran back to the Catacombs in an effort to retrieve my souls, and made it back down into the cavern, ignoring the skeletons. I grabbed my souls, and started back up the stairs. But the first skeleton blocked my way and as I tried to push past it, I heard that screeching noise again. Before I knew it, I was caught in a small explosion and rebounded\u00a0off the wall and into the chasm below. You Died<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Again, I made for the Catacombs to retrieve my souls. They were halfway up the staircase this time, and that was just the edge I needed to make it in and out successfully. I did take another magic blast to the back, but at least this time it didn’t knock me into the great unknown.<\/p>\n

I settled down at Firelink Shrine’s bonfire to rest, and began to\u00a0plan my next move.<\/p>\n

Tune in next week for Part 6: Going Downtown<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan cut her way through the knights and zombies infesting the Undead Parish, and was cut down herself by the Bell Gargoyles. Since she’d been carrying a small wealth in souls and more than a handful of humanity points, Morgan was a little ticked at that stunt that the Bell Gargoyles … Continue reading Dark Souls: Ring That Bell<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,27,6,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dark-souls","category-spooky","category-video-games","category-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3949"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3955,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions\/3955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}