Crown Of The Sunken King DLC

Aaah. Feels like home

    IMPORTANT! I'm splitting this post into two different posts: one about the DLC, and one about the boss battle. There's just too much to talk about to keep it in one giant post. So, I'm going to keep the introductory paragraph intact, for posterity's sake. Enjoy

    (original introductroy paragraph:) So far, the first chapter of a planned trilogy of DLC, called "Crown Of The Sunken King", is fabulous. Now that that's out of the way, I've decided that on top of my normal boss posts, I'm going to go a little more in depth with the actual DLC a bit. This post will still be mostly the boss, lovely Elana here, but I really want to talk about my playthrough of the DLC, and instead of dedicating a bunch of different posts, I figured I'd just throw it in here. I'll say it'll be 60-40 (in favor of boss talk over DLC talk). So, strap yourself in, this may be a long one.
    Since I spoiled so much of Dark Souls II for myself, I'm trying my absolute damnedest not to read anything about this DLC until I complete it. So, I might miss items/areas/bosses, and that's fine. I'll go back and do that after I finish it up. However, there were a few things I was aware of before going into the new DLC, and I'll quickly outline them here. These are based off of one overview I read about a week before the DLC came out, and one review I read of the DLC.

• Overall, it's very good. On par with how DS II is
• The bosses (especially the last) are good
• Environmental moving puzzles!
• It's DIFFICULT
• Also, I knew how to access the DLC. That I just straight up looked up. So sue me (it's not nearly as obscure as the Artorias DLC from the first game)

    With that in mind, let's head in. There might be some spoilers here (especially with bosses), so also bear that in mind.

    After downloading the DLC and starting the game up (I had to download the latest patch, and it took so goddamn long), you get a new item in your inventory. It's a key of sorts, called the Dragon Talon. This is a big tip off, because much of this DLC seems to be based around dragons. I love this, because I think the Souls games almost always knock it out of the park with dragons. After finding where to use the key (Black Gulch), you are transported to a cave-like area. After running through its titled corridors, you arrive outside, high up on a cliff side. The words, "Shulva, Sanctum City" slowly fade in and out, with that familiar gong sound that accompanies going to a new area, and you're ready to go. Shulva is a great looking place, and it continues with the main game's concentration on interesting levels to explore. This one bares slight resemblances to Tseldora. It's a large, underground (should I say, "sunken") city, replete with rocky walls, huge stone formations (man-made, of course), a giant temple, waterfalls falling from above, strange trees/limbs (slightly reminiscent of the Shrine of Amana), narrow stairways, lots of falling hazards, and finally, lots of asshole enemies.

Waterfalls and bridges off in the distance

A giant temple. Just checking it out with my broski here

    I really enjoy the look of Shulva. You start at the highest point of the area, and you continually work your way down. It's very vertical, and it is a great addition to the other, "vertical, work your way down" areas of the Souls games. When you first arrive in Shulva, you have to follow a path that takes you to the first bonfire. As you walk, you'll see some non-descript thing having over an edge above you. It sort of looks like part of the rocky scenery, at least until you get close. Hey, turns out it's a large dragon. It wakes up, and flies past you, then dive-bombs below, out of sight. I have a strange feeling we won't be seeing the last of this guy.
    As you make your way through the city portion of Shulva, you'll notice small lighted pillars. Attacking them will make some part of the environment near you move. Sometimes huge stone pillars will jut up from the ground, both hurting the enemies near them, and giving you a new place to check out. Sometimes they will create bridges that you can cross, or move walls. It's a pretty neat little mechanic.

There's lots of messages that say, "jump". There's also lots of blood stains

    Let's talk about the enemies for a minute here. Most of the ones you fight in the first area are dead (I think?) soldiers. They use either maces, lances, or shoot at you from afar with bows and arrows. Maybe it's because I'm doing this DLC on mg NG++ character (it was either that, or start a whole new character. Fuck that, gimme a challenge!), but these guys are tough customers. They hit hard, can deplete stamina in a few swings, and like to gang up on you. Besides these guys, I came across some amalgamation of those green poison spitting statues from Black Gulch. It's like several of them fused together, and they can walk. I can't figure out how to damage them, except for when I use Chaos Storm. My normal attacks bounce right off, and my other pyromancies don't do anything. I'm not sure what's so special about Chaos Storm, but I just decided to avoid them instead of trying to kill them. Finally, there are bugs that spew equipment damaging acid. They are easy to kill, but caution must be used.
    Eventually, you'll work your way to a narrow bridge that has two lance soldiers on it. Luckily, that sleeping dragon you woke up seems pretty pissed, because he comes through and torches the bridge, killing those two clowns on it. Unfortunately, if you die, every subsequent time you need to cross this bridge, you have to kill those two manually. Across this bridge you enter a tomb-like place, called Dragon's Sanctum. This place is full of small stone corridors, little traps, buttons to be pushed (similar to the lighted pillars from the Shulva area), and jumps/falls to make. There is a sword that I found here called the Puzzling Stone Sword. It's a sword that can also extend to do a whip-attack (with the strong attack, I believe). I really want to upgrade this sword, which scales with dex, by the way. It seems like it could be a legit cool weapon. For now, I'm still rolling with my Mastodon Sword +10.
    There's a very difficult encounter with an invading phantom here. None other than Jester Thomas decided to invade, and unleash fiery hell upon you. He comes plowing in with so much fire he's like a drunken pyromaniac. He literally does not stop throwing fireballs or casting Chaos Storm (I think anyway. It causes several flame pillars to erupt all over the place). On top of this, he will cast Warmth to heal himself too. On top of that, you fight him in a small, two-leveled room attached to a very narrow corridor. I killed him without dying myself, but it was not easy.
    After the Thomas fight, you go down to a very interesting area. You walk through a fog gate (which I thought would yield a boss) and you're in a large undergound lake area. There are giant white stalagmites jutting up all around. And here walks extremely strange and tough enemies. They are like the little cousins of those stupid hind-leg monsters that stomp and jump around in Demon's Ruin from the original Dark Souls. These are big (but not nearly as big as those monsters from the first game), lizard-like monsters who walk on hind legs. They have large mouths with human-looking teeth. These guys are ridiculously tough. I haven't killed one yet, and I probably wont. They bite, and stomp, and shoot dark orbs at you. They look awesome, but yowza, they pack a punch.

Underground lake. It looks spectacular.

Roar

    There's also an enemy you find that genuinely tricked me for a few seconds. They are large, guardian-type guys, and they hold two curved swords. When you first encounter them, there are two, and they are standing in a room with two red-glowing statues, laid out like graves. The two enemies appear exactly like the white phantoms of other players that you occasionally see as you play the game. I thought they were other players, and I thought it was very strange they were just standing, doing nothing. Then they turned and started to attack me. You can't hurt them until you destroy the red-glowing statues. When you do this, they turn un-ethereal, and can be attacked as normal. Getting past the clever little trick, these guys are fucking bastards. They remind me of the sword-swinging half of ol' Flexie (haha, still going strong!). They move very quickly, swing their swords with amazing dexterity, and are strong. Don't bother blocking with a shield, because they will completely drain your stamina in a second, and they'll still be able to attack.
    I'd like to add here that there is a large section of Dragon's Sanctum (right around the Jester Thomas appearance) that has spikes lining the floor. They don't kill you, but they slowly deplete your health the longer you stand on them. This whole area gave me a HUGE Tomb Raider vibe. In fact, a lot of the DLC thus far has given me that kind of feeling. Also of note, there's lots of those phantom guards wandering these spiked areas. Once they are turned human and are able to be attacked, the spikes hurt, and kill, them!

A close up look at the spikes, and those phantom guards.

     Eventually you'll get to a section before the boss gate (oh yeah, this post is about a boss!). You're in a humongous room, at the top of it. You can see the fog gate from where you are, but you can't survive the fall.

It's a loooong way down

    You have to fall down to several different crumbled pillars and stairs below you. It's really not that difficult, but if you try to go too fast, it's easy to fall and die. I've died at least ten times because I was trying to rush down the structure and get to the boss. It's very annoying to get killed by the boss, then die again while trying to get back to her (which is true of any boss, obviously, but here it's accented because it's easy not to die). There's also very tough knight enemies here. They have red capes, and remind me a bit of the Baldur Knights from Dark Souls. These guys are nasty: they attack very hard, and like all the other damn enemies, they can just cut your stamina right down. I try to avoid these guys when I can.
    Finally, when you make your way down all the broken, crumbling architecture, you'll be in an area called Dragon's Rest. There's a large fog boss gate here. I should note, there is a bonfire behind a hidden door right before you start descending down to Dragon's Rest. This is a great thing, because, as of this writing, this boss, Elana, has killed me 19 times. I'm almost positive I'm going to spectacularly smash my record of dying 21 times to a single boss. How has she been whooping my ass? Well, you'll have to check the next blog post for an in-depth look at my amazingly ridiculous battle with her.  

NEW CONTENT STARTS HERE! LOOK LOOK LOOK: 

    Okay guys, I want to apologize for being so incredibly scatterbrained with this post. First, it was a big post about the first two areas of the DLC and the boss. Then, it was just a post about most of the DLC. Now, it's going to be an all-encompassing look at the DLC. After I killed Elana, I tried the next boss (the last of the DLC) a number of times, and, of course, he's hard as hell. Then I remembered I found a key to a locked door right at the beginning of Dragon's Sanctum, so I decided to go there and check that area.
    Once you walk through that door, you go up some ladders, and are back in Shulva. You can find a bonfire up here. You also get invaded by another NPC red phantom (I didn't write down his name, and I can't seem to find it online ANYWHERE). He's tough, but not nearly as bad as Thomas. He does throw Llyod's Talismans at you, which is pretty unique. At first, I had no idea what he was doing, until I got hit by one, and I realized I couldn't use my Estus Flasks.
    Beyond the bonfire here is a small, optional area of the DLC called Cave of the Dead. Fuck this place.

Cave of the Assholes is more like it

    After the first grave-like room, you run down a rocky corridor, and you're in a room with a few of the normal enemies from Shulva. There's some holes in the floor to drop below. The room below is perhaps the most frantic, annoying room in the entire Souls series. It's full of five (I think) soldiers (three can be killed by arrows before you jump down), and about a hundred petrify-spitting statues. They look exactly like the poison spitting ones in Black Gulch, but they are dark, with bright, red eyes. They look awesome in the dark cave area. As I mentioned, they spit this gray, petrifying-liquid, and if you get built up with too much, you're dead. That's it. You turn to stone, and you're dead. It's rough, and it happened probably close to ten times last night. There's also those walking-stone statues that shoot the petrify stuff. I have good news to report! I did finally figure out how to kill them. The stones are all collected on the back of a little turtle-looking creature. You have to hit that thing to kill it. It explains why my Chaos Storm hurt it, but nothing else does. Hallelujah!

Shoot him with arrows! (don't mind the gigantic picture)

    This room filled with the enemies and spitting statues is very confusing. It took me several, several minutes to figure out how to get out. Once you do, you'll drop down a little more and find yourself in a long corridor-type area. There are three of those crawling statue monsters, along with three more regular soldiers, and even one of those huge worms from Black Gulch. Getting through all this finally let's you get to the fog gate, and the boss(es) of the area. I actually did beat them last night, and I'm hoping to have the post up tomorrow (Friday, 8/1). so look for that! I'll talk about it more, but it's grueling to run from the bonfire back to the boss if you die (which I did a bunch, because I repeatedly tried to get pics of the bosses. They are all of poor quality).

    Phew! I think that's everything. I didn't get to explore the area immediately after the bosses, because I shut the game off right after I beat them. I'll include what's after them in their post. I'm DONE updating this post. I'll leave you all with this: I really like this DLC. I don't have it finished yet, but I will soon. I haven't checked out any lore yet, so I have no idea who this Sunken King is. The areas are great to look at (mostly), the bosses are tough, it's decently big, and there are some interesting new enemies. On the down-side, I'd say some of the enemies are less-than-inspired, and so far I haven't found anything amazing, in terms of loot. I know I still have places to explore, and I know I missed stuff (repair tree!). Obviously, I would suggest this DLC to any DS II fans. It meets the expectations of the main game, but it falls a bit short of the brilliance of the Artorias DLC from the first game. However, when all three Crown DLC's are released, and are seen as one trilogy, I'm sure it will be equal to, or better than, Artorias. Thanks for reading (and re-reading, and re-re-reading)!