Hello friends, I'm back to report progress. I'm just a bit past the both of you, it seems. I defeated the area boss of the Undead Settlement. To be frank, I think for the time at which you fight each boss in the game, Iudex Gundyr is relatively more challenging than Vordt of the Boreal Valley or the Curse-rotted Greatwood (Undead Settlement boss, but hey, we don't care about spoilers for Dark Souls here!).

I think I'll speak a bit more about early impressions. First, Botch you're correct, I was wrong regarding HP. When you're not kindled with an ember you lose a decent chunk of HP, but it's a one time static loss, not incremental like Dks2. Embers are very easy to come by for me so far, but I traditionally co-op a lot in these games, so I've got at least half of my current stockpile, which is about 21 or 22 embers, through co-op.

• I like that covenants are just equipped items this time around; I don't think there was a lot to be gained from attempting to recreate the mystique and weirdness and general difficulty of joining some covenants in Dks1, and the system in 2 seems sort of a half-measure compared to this simplicity. People will hop around as they see fit, this simply offers less resistance where there needn't be any.
• I love the online interactions I've had so far. The Mound-makers covenant (purple summon signs) is very interesting to me. It's unfortunate that you can easily be locked out of them (you'll want to ..*ahem*.. enter a certain cage and receive a cutscene, much like Nito's coffin scene, before defeating the Undead Settlement area boss, otherwise you're locked out of the Mound-makers. So yeah, the mad phantoms. This was a really cool idea. And I think it's at its best in the early days when there are so many new players. As a purple phantom your goal is usually, from what I've seen, to kill either the host, or one of the host's support phantoms. However, unlike being a red phantom, as a purple you are susceptible to attacks from world enemies, and you can attack them back. Yesterday I was summoned to a host's world, gave him a quick poke with my sword, and he seemed confused, and went back to fighting enemies. I think he thought I was an ally, and indeed you could act as one, and so I did. I battled enemies in the beginning of the area, around the burning tree, and helped him clear most of them. Then he was invaded by a red phantom. To confuse everyone involved, I decided to still protect the host and fight the red phantom with him. This may have confused the red phantom, I'm not sure. We battled for at least a minute or two, and then the host had a protective blue phantom summoned into his world. At this point I knew the blue phantom wouldn't ignore me, so we paired off into duels, I the purple versus the blue, and the host versus the red. It was really fucking brilliant, and our fights lasted a good few minutes. Eventually the host defeated the red phantom, around the same time the blue phantom retreated away from me. The host, still thinking I was friendly I guess, ran over to find me and had his guard lowered. I knew the blue phantom would out me as a threat as soon as he healed up and returned, so I plunged my Estoc+3 into the host's back and finished him off, returning to my world with my reward. Dark Souls multiplayer can be the best thing ever when it happens in funny and awesome ways.
• I haven't interacted with any Souls community forums yet about the game, nor do I really plan to, aside from the odd visit to the wiki to figure something out. So I don't know if my opinion is in the majority or minority here, but sorcery, miracles and pyromancy seem to be less useful than they've ever been before here. Focus points are precious, and the spells I've acquired so far, when weighted against its potential for other uses (weapon skills), are very weak. Soul arrow is garbage, and the Farron soul dart has to be FromSoft trolling. It did 4 damage to areas in the beginning High Wall area. It seems utterly pointless. I don't think sorcery will be viable as a build like it was in Dks2, and I think hexes are just gone completely, or maybe they're sorceries to be found later in the game. Magic has been supplementary for me so far, but the magic I do have has been very useful. While I never really used Hush in Dks1 or 2, I use it in 3 (in its new form "Spook") regularly. And Magic Weapon is useful as ever, giving my otherwise modest estoc a nice boost when required. Those are the only two spells I've bothered to equip throughout my journey so far. The heal spells can be useful, but now that I have 7 estus flasks and 1 ashen flash I don't want to waste the attunement slot on a heal spell. So yeah. Sorcery seems to be nerfed big time.
• The areas keep getting better, which fills me with confidence. We saw it in both Dark Souls games prior, the opening areas are typically strong, and the early mid-game stuff seems weaker. So far that hasn't been my experience. The High Wall of Lothric is a fine opening area; I don't like it from a creative stand point as much as either the Burg-Parish area, or the Forest of Fallen Giants, but that was made up for by the heightened challenge. I love the Undead Settlement, even if it straight up reminds me of Hemwick Charnal Lane from Bloodborne, it was a fine inspiration to take from. The area after that is even better, the Road of Sacrifices features a forest/marsh area that seems likely to become the new Darkroot Garden. I love it. And I've just reached two zones past that - the Cathedral of the Deep, which I haven't even climbed the steps of, and Farron Keep, which from peeking through the front door seems to be Blighttown 2.0. And I'm looking forward to it, if only because I see some slug-like creatures and pleasepleaseplease tell me they have some large titanite shards!!

That seems like enough talking for now. Oh, just a few more thoughts and tips. I'm wearing the Fallen Knight armor set, which has got to be one of the coolest looking outfits in all the Souls games. Also, when you fellas unlock the ability to transpose boss souls into items, there's a tantalizing-looking ring called the Pontiff's Left Eye - let me tell you, it sucks. It says that it restores HP with successive attacks. I tested it and nothing at all seemed to happen. I referred to the wikis and it turns out "successive hits" means, in most cases, somewhere from 7 to 10 hits with your weapon, in a row. Which my stamina bar can't even do right now. So yeah, maybe it's glitched and they'll patch it, but if it's as they intended it, I'd recommend holding off on that ring. It's really disappointing.

Oh, and I figured out what happens when you "draw out true strength" with that Yoel character. You get the free level, but that's what put those Dark Sigil key items in my inventory; remember I mentioned that, Botch? I read up on this, but not wanting to give myself too much information, I basically learned that gaining up to 5 of these (I think the max) has some lore implications, and will make another character appear in Firelink. The downside is that apparently when you die enough times your character just looks permanently hollow. You can cure it by doing something with the Fire Keeper. But I haven't explored that yet. I think I'll just keep trying to get free levels. I've got two so far. The Dark Sigil seems to add a new stat on the character screen, right below your character level: Hollowing. Mine is at 4 right now, which I think means I've died 4 times since getting the Dark Sigil. I dunno..this'll all become clearer in due time I suppose.

Ok that's enough for now!