Oh man, a corrupt save game would probably put me off the series forever. I admire your resilience, Helmut.

Circling back and starting again does have the benefit of showing how the games work. As you say, it's so much faster the second time around. It took me about forty hours of play to get past the Bell Gargoyles the first time; now I can do it in two. Which makes retracing your steps much less painful.

I'm retracing somewhat in Dark Souls II right now, since I've more or less migrated over to my PC build and she was well behind. I may live to regret this move if multiplayer is overrun by griefers.

If you go with Dex, I'll again pipe up for the Balder Side Sword. It's a rare drop in the Gargoyle church area, from the Balder skeletons. A Covetous Gold Serpent Ring (from Sen's Fortress) helps in finding one. This weapon has all the advantages of a sword, the reach of a spear, scales well with Dexterity, and looks awesome.

It would have fixed my problem if I had chosen to restore from the cloud and not vice-versa. I was just scrabbling over a few thousand souls, silly really. 

I had been seriously considering tossing it in. My progress after the Lord Vessel had slowed to a crawl and I wasn't enjoying the game very much. As it turns out, the first part of the game is far more fun for me so I restarted a character, and got along really well. The area at the beginning, so hard and long the first time through, is really very compact and goes really fast. I may become a leading world expert in the first 20 minutes, who knows.

I just learned about the different moves from the wiki. I knew the different weapons had different move sets, but didn't realize the size of the set. I thought there were only two moves. I was wondering why my new wanderer character was pulling off some cool stuff coming out of dives, etc. (I think my new (but cheapo) controller may be glitchy in the sticks which helps) Now that I know about that and that holding the B button makes your character run, I SHALL NOT BE STOPPED. 

There's a very unusual vibe to this playthrough. Last time I was much more patient, and just plodded along through certain sections very repetitively. One side effect of this was that I got to a pretty high level before I really went anywhere. I managed to get a Dark Knight Sword early on, and was very powerful with it. While I'm more capable with the controller now, and had no issues with the tower gargoyles, the Capra Demon is giving me fits. Too tight an area to really dodge effectively, what with the foliage and tight walls continually messing with the camera. It's not even an area you can properly summon helm in. So I find myself farming a ton to get my weaponry ascended properly. I had thought the first dark knight you encounter would always drop the sword. 

Is there a built in bonus to your starting weapon? As a wanderer, I have the scimitar and I've noticed that when I used it in the undead burg, I seemed to get more soft humanity than when I use the Katana. 

Edit: geggis I think those urns are called sepulchers (although I haven't seen them in the game). In the science fiction version of Inferno, they are in the sixth circle of Hell to house the heretics.

Turned out to be general user unprepared-ness. I just wasn't ready. I wasn't doing enough damage and didn't have the endurance nor vitality to make it. It's a good gatekeeper battle no question. Also, it's around this time down in the darkroot gardens when you can find the wolf ring for added poise, which helps get through the pups with less getting knocked off balance. It seemed to me. I remember the threshold when you can one hit  the souls around the campfire in the burg, it's roughly the same threshold to one hit killing the dogs on the way to the demon, so that just makes it quicker and easier to get back there if you fail. It's also the point where a two handed drop attack does nearly 1/2 the health bar on the demon. Earlier, I was only doing about 10%.  

I can't recall a game where knowing the land is such a benefit. I'm in Anor Londo after 23 hours, a trek that took somewhere around 160 the first time through. Granted some of that was time spent sleeping, waiting in vain for a summons, but still. I'm trying to think of another game where the familiarity bonus is so high. From the gates of Sen's Fortress to Anor Londo with one death, and that because the boulder mechanism reset while I was exploring and I got mashed. The stories will be told, when I am long gone from this world, "He sure was good at Sen's Fortress the second time through." 

Welcome, Simplen00b! Thank you for enjoying the Diaries, and let me assure you - if you can raise your shield and thrust attack, you've technically got all the skills you need. Anything else is gravy. I say this from experience, because it's pretty much all I did and I finished. : )

Share your adventures and feel free to seek help and moral support here. We have two of the most knowledgeable Dark Souls players in the world here at Tap, and... uh... neither of them is me. I don't bring helpful advice or strategy tips to the party, but I do bring my rapier wit and roguish charm.