I figure the pyromancy guy had to do with some dialogue I had with him. does that mean my pyromancy is screwed for this playthrough?

No, you're still fine. Just won't be able to buy any more spells from him in particular. I think the only ones unique to him are Iron Flesh and Flash Sweat. Useful, but not absolutely vital.



One boss fight left in the DLC and it's optional. I haven't done it yet, but I did get summoned into it while trying to help with another one, and a fight it is! Hardest of them so far, imho. Especially getting its tail. Narrow window to attack. Maybe on par with Seath's tail if you're solo.

Finished the rest of the DLC. Didn't have to fight any boss more than three times to beat them.
Could be the fact that I've played through the game about ten times now, on top of about as many plays of Demon's Souls, but I had no trouble picking up boss patterns. They all did have some surprises in store, to be sure. But nothing I couldn't handle yet. We'll see how the optional fight goes solo.
Oh, I didn't quite fight the last boss solo. It took him on once and got him to about 10% HP before I mistimed a roll and got power slammed to death. Wasn't sure precisely what elemental makeup their attacks might be attributed to, so I went human just for the extra defense. Well, it turns out that this fight has a unique feature, if you took certain actions in the level. There's a character in the center of the boss room you can summon. Considering who it was, I could not pass up the chance. It was awesome.

Found all the new magics, but can only use the Pyromancy. Sadly, there's just the one of those, and the rest are Sorceries. They all appear to work along the same lines as existing spells, but slightly different. For one thing, they all deal physical damage. You can block them with a shield, but it drains stamina like crazy. Other than that, the variations are like the difference between Great Fireball and Great Chaos Fireball from the normal game. Same basic effect as a similar spell, but with a twist. For example, Homing Soul Mass has a variant called Pursuers. It has the same effect, but the projectiles are slower and home better. It's nice, but I do hope there's greater variation in the next game.

The Arena matchmaking is weird, and didn't work too well. Only willing to wait around to get into one four player free for all deathmatch. Could just be the time I was playing, but it took forever.
Now, once it started...awesome. You'd think, "Surely it was constant backstabs!" but no. Backstabbing opens you up to being backstabbed, so if there are two other players there to do the same to you it's a huge deterrent. Still happened occasionally, but even then no one had the Hornet Ring on so there wasn't any OHKing.
Match starts with everyone hanging out in cages up top of a structure. When the game finally starts you fall down into an arena (of which there are two), taking no damage from fall or for a second afterwords. When you die you just get sent back to the cage and immediately fall again. The match is timed, and the person with the most points at the end wins.
There are also Duel (1v1) and Team (2vs2) modes. Didn't try them, but I understand they're much the same.
And each match type is divided into tiers based on Soul Level. 1-50, 51-100, and 101-200. not sure if there's anything higher.

Overall, I'm not sure it's worth what they're asking, but I most definitely enjoyed it. It's fairly short, but its quality is on par with the rest of the game.

Funny story to relate. Got summoned into a world along with another phantom. The summoner was hoping to have our help to kill off a nearby NPC for some reason. Probably drops his armor or something like most NPCs do. Anyway, it turns out that the non-interaction rule about summons and NPCs still applies even when they're hostile. We couldn't lay a hand on him. Host died after that.

Wow, I was on holiday for 3 nights and nobody still hasn't beaten the anor londo boss ?, surprised.

@Monkey, thanks for the mini review of the dlc, might pick it up depending on how good the first batch of COD dlc is, also , they really need to sort out NZ PSN store pricing, nothing feels worth the money on there, very disappointing and aggravating.

Mitchell wrote:

Wow, I was on holiday for 3 nights and nobody still hasn't beaten the anor londo boss ?, surprised.

@Monkey, thanks for the mini review of the dlc, might pick it up depending on how good the first batch of COD dlc is, also , they really need to sort out NZ PSN store pricing, nothing feels worth the money on there, very disappointing and aggravating.

I played it once since you last posted. I've been playing a bit of the lord of the rings moba on consoles. I got back into playstation all stars. a new update for minecraft on the 360 was released, and i've been watching this

Oh ok, no big deal, just seemed like you were about to reach the boss when I left.

o, so i am close to the boss.

EDIT: also there are so many places to go, and I want to explore them all before moving on.

mitchell had me all worried about this boss fight. But I gotta say they are by far my favorite boss fight yet. I have never had this much fun fighting any of the other bosses.

If you liked them, wait until you can get to the New Londo Ruins boss fight.

why do you think i'll like that?

You'll see...


Really, depending on where you've put your stat points, and when you decide to take it on, I think it will stretch your playstyle to the limit. It's entirely doable, of course. Just that the most effective way of going about it is one your build isn't suited to. It'll be harder than normal for you.

what I mean is are you saying because this fight is hard, and I love it, that I will love the other fight because it is also hard?

Because my reasons for loving this fight arent simply because it is hard, but various things that as a result make it hard. (and some that dont necessarily make it hard.)

I can go into specifics if you want

Go ahead.

My character had great defense but poor mobility, hence why I found anor Londo boss challenging and new Londo boss easy.

Most fights are a matter of getting owned, then learning the attacks, learning to dodge them, avoiding them then attacking. but this boss fight is nothing like that. these bosses have such a simple attack pattern. its very easy to get that pattern down right away. this fight isnt about learning the patterns and taking advantage of them. it is about constantly maintaining 2 different enemies. you need to alwasy be paying attention to both of them. Always know what attacks (if any) they are both doing. you need to be able not only know what attack they are doing and when, but be able to get them to do their attacks at certain times, to try and sync their attacks so they are both open at the same time so you can attack one of them. or even use one boss to block the other. in fact several times I have been able to get the exeuctioner to slam his hammer down to block the dragonslayers dash attack, giving me tons of time to attack him.

even beyond all that its not just about doing as much damage as possible, but who I do damage to and when. Its very easy to kill the dragonslayer. I could do it within the 1st 30 seconds of the fight, its super easy (my combo breaks his pose leaving him vulnerable for quite some time, enabling me to do about 3/4 of his health after his initial dash attack at the start) but dealing damage so I keep them both in the fight and knockdown their health together, so when i am ready to kill 1 I can kill the other shortly after.

In short it is a much more "active" fight then with any of the other ones. I can literally feel myself using parts of my brain that I dont typically use all that often

BTW why is the old destroyed place that is just ruins and filled with ghosts called NEW londo, and the nice looking city called anor londo? would make more sense the other way around.

You took dragonslayer ornstein out in half a minute ?? , damn . My first 5 tries I was stupidly using a lightning spear and was thus doing no damage, then I spent an hour making a fury sword which made the fight much easier, even then don't know how you could take him out that fast.

He is that easy to take down. Everything he does can be easily blocked or dodged. Smough is similar, though much easier to dodge than to block, in my experience.
The bigger challenge for me was keeping Orn alive into the second half while taking down Smough.
Which one you kill first determines not only which soul you get, but which one's armor you can buy later.
I'm actually playing as an Ornstein type character at the moment. Dragonslayer Spear +5 and Orn's armor. Spear's not the best in the world, so I need to find a better one.


As I suspected, the optional DLC boss wasn't all that tough, but getting his tail solo was a royal pain. He rarely ever leaves it exposed, and turns about more than Seath. Dragged the fight out quite a ways.
Other than that, he's just one where you have to pick your moment to do damage and whittle him down. Trying a long combo is punished pretty badly.
The tail weapon you get for cutting it off, the Obsidian Greatsword is pretty neat. Slow, like all Greatswords, but also Enchantable which is not normal for a Dragon weapon. The 2-handed R2 special attack is a black flame AoE that looks fun. Too slow an execution time for PvP though.
The fun part? You also get a ring for killing him. The Calamity Ring has one function. The wearer takes double damage.

I have a +10 uchigatana with 40 dexterity.

remember my build is high damage, low defense.

WAIT! so who I take out 1st matters? I assume who I take out last is who I get.

Yes, that's true, my hardest boss won't be your hardest boss due to different builds having different strengths and weaknesses .

@Monkey, any more info on the dlc ?, it doesn't have trophies which sucks but that's no reason not to buy it if it's good.

that is so stupid. I killed dargonslayer, then executioner. then the cutscene happened showing executioner getting powered up by dragonslyer, and he was back at full health.

I assume he fills up on health all the time whenever you kill the other one. in which case my whole plan to take them down on health together was a waste of time.

It's not at all stupid. It merely circumvents that particular dual boss convention common to games. Namely, taking them out together to avoid the second, harder form. You tried to metagame that, and it turned out not to work. That doesn't make it stupid.
Now, would it be great if you could take them both out to get both souls (and the Leo Ring) by killing them at the same time? I'll agree that it would. And I think doing that would require more skill as well. So, yeah, maybe it's a little bit stupid.
But this boss's other gimmick is that it changes up the fight half way. No way to avoid it.


Mitch, just what I said before. What's there is awesome, but doesn't quite cover the cost, imho. Good fights, some new weapons and armor, and if certain actions are taken, a slight change to one of the regular game cutscenes (though nothing major).

I actually thought the fight was made more interesting by bringing them down together, then doing it 1 at a time. now it just makes it go from a really interesting fight to a typical average boss fight (talking about going from when you fight 2 to when you kill 1 of them)


and what I found stupid was that I had literally killed them both then suddenly one wasnt dead.

Also dragon slayer's dash attack is really starting to annoy me. he keeps hiding behind executioner and dashing around him and hitting me.

Oh, I thought you had beaten them for some reason. Only read below if you want to read a few pointers in accordance with the strategy I used.

Go for Ornstein first, my strategy was to only attack after he does his dash or when he is far away from smough. Smough in second form is easier to deal with, you want to kite him around a pillar and sneak an attack in when he does his dashing hammer attack (very hard to avoid in the open). Sorry about no spoiler tags, hard on an aging iPod touch .

nah, I killed the dragonslayer. I actually am enjoying the fight so much I dont want it to end.

Ive got what I need to do down fine, its just a matter of avoiding some of the cheaper stuff. Usually when I die it is from a triple tag team attack. Most of the time it starts with me rolling away from executioner, and getting hit with the lightning bolt right out of the roll, then followed by a smash of the hammer, then hit with a dash attack.

I find his down smash much easier to punish. His charge attack is easily dodged with a back roll.

Just a heads up dark souls is coming out of my system. and when games come out, a lot of times thats when I stop playing them. its not often games make it back in. the good news though is that where I am at in dark souls I dont feel like I am stuck, and I am enjoying the fight.

There have been so many times where i went back to play some more dark souls simply because it was in my disc and I was tired of playing whatever else it was I was playing.

and if you care what it is that got me to take it out you can click the spoilers

Spoiler: