Graverobber, Varg, and Cerah (Cave bosses)

The Three Stooges

    If you unlock the door at the start of the Dragon's Sanctum, you'll eventually gain entry to a small, optional area of the DLC called Cave of the Dead. I talked about this place in my overview post of the DLC (read it here, won't you?), but I stopped just short of the fog gate that you get to at the end of it. Would you care to step through it? You would? Oh joy, that's wonderful. In that case, prepare for one of the longest, or maybe the longest, boss battles you're likely to endure in a Souls game!

I only kept this one because it showed their names pretty clearly

    Before I go on, let me apologize for the quality of the pictures. They are awful. And it's not for lack of trying, oh no. My wife and I both took turns trying to get decent pictures of these assholes, but they move fast, they gang up on you, and it's generally difficult to just stand still enough to get clear pictures. I don't ever do this, but for these guys, here's a link to a wiki page that shows clear pictures of what they look like.

    Okay, when you enter the fog gate, three names pop up on your screen: Afflicted Graverobber, Ancient Soldier Varg, and Cerah, the Old Explorer. The first thing you'll notice right off the bat is that Varg looks exactly like Havel. He wears full Havel hear, and uses his Dragon Tooth weapon and his Greatshield. I didn't notice it when I fought them, but reading that small wiki page above, the other two are also dressed in gear from other characters from the game (that would be Graverobber wearing Alva's armor, and Cerah wearing Lucatiel's mask). I have no idea the significance of this, but I'm very curious to find out. Since they don't drop souls when you kill them, I'll have to do some sleuthing.

See? Havel's set. Complete with huge dong hammer

    This battle is essentially a battle against three NPC invader phantoms. Obviously, they aren't red phantoms, but they are similiar: they have massive amounts of health, and they run around like crazy. When you first enter the gigantic room (more on it soon), you'll see the names pop up, and you'll see two NPC's running at you. These are Varg and the Graverobber. Cerah stands back and shoots great arrows. As I said, Varg uses Havel's shield and Dragon Tooth, and he hits extraordinarily hard. He slams it down, he pirouettes with it, and in general just swings it around like a beast. I had the hardest time taking him out. He can easily deplete stamina in a swing or two, and his damn weapon packs a huge punch. He also can run pretty damn fast with all that heavy armor on.
    The Afflicted Graverobber uses dual Berserker Blades. He slashes quickly with them, but he wasn't quite the problem that fake-Havel there was. The problem with both of them is that they both chase you, and they stay by each other's side. So you can't have one without the other. Finally, Cerah shoots those huge great arrows that knock you down. If you get close enough, she (or he? Not sure of the genders of any, but Cerah sounds feminine) replaces the giant bow with an estoc. A few final notes before I divulge my amazing, unique strategy: although it never happened to me, they can backstab you. Be careful for that. In turn, though, you can backstab them. Anything that can happen in a PvP match can happen here. Apparently they use Estus Flasks also, but I didn't experience this.

This would actually be a decent picture of Cerah if I wasn't locked on to her

    Sadly, these three were the only of the three boss battles in the DLC that I actually could solo. My strategy? Use the boss room (and their stupid AI) to your advantage. When you first walk into the room, you're on an almost-bridge like area. To either side are holes, but they just lead to lower levels. These are smaller areas that have pooled with water. Those petrify statues (both the stationary ones and the walking cluster ones) show up down here, but they are hardly a problem. Both sides of the lower areas have ramps leading back up to the main area. Firstly, I took out Cerah, who seems to have the least amount of health. My strategy for this was to run up to her, slash once while running (maybe twice if you have time), and then jump down to the water below. Varg and the Graverobber followed me down into the water, while Cerah stood up at the top still. Then, I'd run up the ramp, and run up to Cerah (be careful of those damn arrows. They hurt tremendously and they knock you on your ass), and slash once or twice again, then jump back in the water. Eventually, Cerah will start moving around too, but she doesn't follow you in the way the other two do, so she's always isolated, and you can get in hits before the other two catch up. If you just keep running, you can take out Cerah easily enough. Now, onto the real annoying part: taking out Graverobber and Varg.

Probably the best one I got of Graverobber

Graverobber attacking, while Varg waits his turn

    My strategy for taking out these two was similar to the Cerah strategy, wherein I would lead them to the right side of the room, and down into a small pool area. Generally, Graverobber would jump down first, and I got hit him once or twice, before Varg showed up as backup. Then, I'd run/roll past them, up the little ramp, wait for them to follow, and repeat that basic action. It's not fun in a traditional sense, but it worked for me. In general, this is a weak boss battle to do solo, because I truly believe this is the only way to really work them down. Otherwise, you'd have to stand toe-to-toe with both Graverobber and Varg, and that just seems impossible. I recently watched an "Impressions" video from a YouTuber named VaatiVidya (an awesome channel for all manner of Souls stuff, I'd highly suggest checking him out), and he mentioned this as the worst of the three boss battles, but in fairness, apparently it's meant as more of a co-op battle. I could see this being an awesome co-op battle, and I fully intend to try it on my next playthrough of the DLC.
    Okay, so you've taken out Cerah, and after much attrition, you've killed the Graverobber in a similar way. Now, you're left with Varg. I distinctly remember killing Havel in Dark Souls by backstabbing him when I got the chance. I'm not sure why I didn't try this here. Instead, I still did the same basic thing: led him to one of the ledges, and jumped down myself. I then tried to get a hit on him as he fell behind me, before he could attack. With a combination of this, and legitimately trying to fight him, I took him out. The entire battle took a good 10-15 minutes, if not even a little bit more. I was happy to at least beat one day boss on this DLC by myself. The rewards aren't amazing, but it was still satisfying to beat them. I mean, you're not gonna buy the $10 DLC and not beat all the bosses, optional or not, right?

At least my message was rated

    As I mentioned above, we had an atrocious time taking pictures. Part of this was because I kept dying trying to get to the boss. The bonfire isn't too far, but you have to run through a gauntlet of bullshit to get to the fog gate. The dark room full of the statues and soldiers is where I died 90% of the time. It's tough to find your way in general, but it's much tougher when you're trying to run and avoid all that crap that's getting spat at you. It got frustrating. And of course, after this, you can't just run through the final few enemies in the next area, because they will gang up and kill you as you try to walk through the fog gate. So you have to kill three soldiers, cut down a few statues, kill at least one of the walking cluster of statues (because I was petrified and killed down here, before I could reach the fog gate), and really, it just gets old after a few tries. It reminds me of the problems I had getting to the Executioner's Chariot boss battle. After our third attempt at getting good pictures, I just said screw it, because I would have wasted my whole night trying to get good ones.
    This is the weakest of the three boss battles here, but strangely, it's the easiest. I'm very curious if there is any background info on these three, and why they are dressed the way they are. They are completely optional, so I don't have a problem with this battle being on the stranger (or, more gimmicky, in the way you have to kill them) side. It's the same with the Ancient Dragon from the main game: lots of people bitched at how unfair/unfun that battle was, but I didn't have a problem with it. It's optional, you fools!
    Anyway, I'll have one more boss post for the final boss of this excellent DLC. Luckily the next DLC chapter is out at the end of August, and hopefully I'll be getting it then. So, after my next post (which should be Monday, 8/4), there won't be any more Dark Souls II stuff for three-or-so weeks. Look out for a B-LOG SLAYING post for Batman: Arkham Origins, and maybe one other too, in the coming weeks. As always, thanks for reading!

Times I died: 3
Difficulty: 8/10
Rating: 6/10
  

Elana, the Squalid Queen

 FUUUUUUCK THIS BATTLE

    I was originally going to condense this post, and my post about the Shulva/Dragon Sanctum area into one, but there is no way I wanna smoosh that all into one post. So here is a dedicated post to maybe the hardest (so far?) boss in the entirety of Dark Souls II (judging strictly by times died, at least)
   
    When you make your way down to Dragon's Rest (explore the high areas to either side. You have to jump to them, and there's those caped-knights to fight, but there are some goodies there), you're met with a huge fog gate. Could the size of the fog gate be a direct correlation to how incredibly hard and annoying a boss battle will be? Probably not. Well, take a deep breath, and come through the gate with me.
    When you go through the fog gate, you are inside a giant room with a beautiful dragon mosaic on the back wall. There's also some white candles laid out on the floor, perhaps in some sort of ritualistic manner. And what's in front of that mosaic, you might ask?

This is more to show off the room and that awesome-looking wall

    In case you can't see the minuscule figure in the above picture, that's Elana, the Squalid Queen. And boy, squalid she certainly is. She looks a little like Nashandra, and some of her attacks are similar. Except she's 100 times more difficult than Nashandra. Firstly, she's a tall decrepit woman wearing an ornate dress that I'm guessing is made of skin (or it at least looks like skin). When you first walk into the room, she babbles on about how you're going to rot, then she produces a mean axe out of thin air. This is by far her only method of attack.

Here she is, moments after crushing my skull with that axe

    She reminds me of the Darklurker fight a bit, because she has a zillion attacks. Firstly, if you get close, she can swing that axe like nobody's business. She will swing it once, twice, or thrice, so be careful of that. If you stand too close for too long, she'll unleash a flurry of dark magic that flies around her, like an AoE attack. It's easy to run away from, because she telegraphs it. The radius isn't very big either. If you are far from her, she'll shoot two variations of dark orbs: one is a straight line of three of them, and the other is a spread shot of five or six. Both these are fairly easy to dodge, but if you aren't paying attention, they can hurt like hell (especially the straight line. That can almost kill you by itself. The spread out one is really easy to dodge). Also, if you are far, she'll summon glowing red orbs that appear near you. They explode after a second or two. Again though, this is pretty easy to dodge. When you see them, just run. One attack she seems to do rarely (she might only use it if her health gets low, which would explain why I haven't seen it much) is a homing dark orb attack. Like the homing soul spells, she'll conjure three orbs over her head, and shoot them at you. Also, she likes to teleport around the room, disappearing in a puff of red smoke, which can get quite annoying. Here's what it looks like, in action:

Pictured: Annoyance

     You might be asking yourself why I can't beat her, when I describe all of her attacks as easy to dodge? Well, I've withheld one other thing she likes to do. She'll summon some minions to help her out. Oh fun! More gang-style fights. The first time I fought her, she summoned three golden skeletons. Other than the color, they are just normal skeletons. Two hits kills them. This isn't a huge deal, really. Just quickly dispatch the skeletons, and remember to pay attention to the shit she also throws at you.
    I died on my first attempt. On my second attempt, I saw her start to summon, and I was ready to smack those skeletons around some more. You should have seen my face when, instead of skeletons spawning, it was a nice gold version of Velstadt! What in the actual fuck? I'm not done with this DLC yet (obvi, guys), so I have no idea if there is any lore behind Velstadt being summoned here, or if it's just because he's a big, tough, enemy. It's not the full Velstadt experience, as he only swings his huge hammer. He doesn't get charged up or shoot his own dark magic. Still, with Elana firing all manner of dark bullshit at you, while you're trying to avoid the golden boy chasing after you with a huge hammer, it gets very hectic. I was still actually really enjoying the battle the first 8-10 times: as I said, it's hectic, but it's fun trying to run around, avoiding Velstadt, and getting hits in on the Queen. I'm now at 19 (failed) attempts, and it's not quite as fun anymore. I'm really holding out summoning help, because I'd love to do this by myself. The fact I'm on NG++ doesn't help, because my sword might as well be a little stick. It does between 450-550 damage (depending if I used Flame Weapon), and it barely scratches her. She must have like 30,000 HP or something crazy. I've gotten her down to about a quarter health once, otherwise most other attempts barely get to half health. One final note: she doesn't always summon Velstadt. I believe it's random between that and the skeletons (I'm trying not to read and spoil anything online for myself generally, but I did read she also summons golden pigs, or something? I've fought her 19 times and haven't seen that yet. I've even read she summons human players? Again, have not seen it).

    All that up there was from my original post from a few days ago. What you are about to read is all pure new goodness. There are no more pictures unfortunately, but there was no way I was wasting any time trying to capture pictures as I fought this boss for my thirtieth time (!!)

    Firstly, yes, I did beat Elana last night. Secondly, it was super fucking hard. Thirdly, I had to summon help. And fourthly, no, summoning help does not make this battle an incredibly easy cakewalk, like basically every other battle. If anything, it might be harder. But after trying I think 23 times on my own, to no avail, I needed help, otherwise I'd be stuck on her forever, and never get to check out the rest of the DLC. My strategy for meleeing her solo was to run at her as soon as I went through the fog gate, and and get as many attacks off as possible while she talked and produced her axe. I could usually get three or four. After that, I would stay close to her, dodge her axe smashes, and run when she did the dark AoE attack. Otherwise, I'd just take pot shots when I had an opening. This would have been perfectly acceptable if not for one thing: Velstadt.
     Every time she summoned Velstadt, that might as well have been the end of the battle. I just could. Not. Deal. With. Both of them at the same time. Maybe I just really suck, but meleeing her solo is an incredibly great challenge, and if any of you have done it, my hat is off to you. Again, I'm on NG++. I wonder how much different a normal NG battle is. Perhaps I'll have to try that some time. Because I'm dumb, I didn't take any notes. I meant to add this originally, but totally forgot. I tried five or six times with the Puzzling Stone Sword +4, and, meh, it was okay. It attacks quickly, and the two-hand attack is a thrust, which is nice, but it just didn't do enough damage on this boss to really justify using it. Oh well, still a really cool sword.
    Well, after getting crushed time and time again, I decided I would summon help. I didn't want to, but I was past the point of caring. First, I summoned NPC Steelheart Ellie and a player. We died. I then tried all sorts of combos of summoning: just Steelheart Ellie, her and a human player, two human players, one human player. I know you can summon Benhart here also, but I have no idea where his summon sign is. Thank god I had plenty of Human Effigies with me. I know, I could have been summoned and killed the boss to get my humanity back, but I wasn't in the mood to help. Plus, it seemed every time I did help someone, the world master got killed with Elana having like 10% of her health left.
    Hey, speaking of getting killed when the boss has 10% of her health left, that happened to me two times last night. There's nothing quite as rage inducing as having a boss almost dead, where literally three or four hits will kill them, but then you get killed instead. The worse was one such case, where I had two Sunbros helping me, and we were wrecking ass. We were all doing well, smashing Elana, smashing Velstadt, just doing some general smashing, and Elana was almost dead. I mean, a sliver of health. Five hits max, and she was dead. And then, out of nowhere, BAM! That fucking line of dark orbs killed me. How come I didn't dodge it? Oh, well, Velstadt was standing in the way, and I didn't see them until it was too late. That made me want to crush my controller into thousands of pieces.
    Eventually, late into the night, we were victorious. I summoned two humans players, and we went in. One of the guys got killed about halfway through the battle, but me and the other guy (I don't remember his name, maybe I'll write it down when I get home and include it here) persevered, and with excellent skill, and some luck, we took down Elana. I wish I could go more in depth with a specific strategy, but I don't really have one. If you're going melee, I'd suggest summoning. If you are one of those hardcore, "pssh, summoning is for n00bs, I'm too hardcore, and a REAL Souls player" kind of people, well, fuck off. I generally don't resort to summoning unless I have to, but I would never look down on someone that did it consistently. It's part of the game, and it levels the playing field. I mean, the fucking boss can summon people, why can't you?
    Sorry for that little tangent. I sent a thank you message to the guy that helped me kill her, and I added him as a friend on PSN (I'm nosferat3. Add me!). I'd like to add that this fight felt very fluid, and it barely lagged at all with summons, or playing as a summon. Most boss battles have some sort of lag when playing with human phantoms, this one seemed almost lag-free. At any rate, it felt great to get past that battle. Now, finally, I can explore more of this great DLC. Once Elana died, the giant dragon wall opened, revealing a path to a cave with a bonfire.
    What lies beyond the bonfire? Remember I mentioned that we wouldn't be seeing the last of that dragon, from the beginning? Yeah, well, let's jump from the frying pan to the fire here. Check back (hopefully) soon for the next installment of my boss posts.

    One final thing I forgot! Elana did in fact summon three golden pigs during one of our fights. They seemed identical to those little bastards that run around Majula. So random.

    The difficulty rating might seem extreme, and maybe I'm being emotional with it, but this boss (even with summons, which almost always brings the difficulty down to a 2 or 3) was harder than Darklurker, harder than the Throne Defenders (because they are SUPER easy with help), harder than Smelter Demon. Oi vey.

Times I died: 30 (yup, shattered my record of 21)
Difficulty: 9.5/10
Rating: 8/10
 

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)!