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Almost two months have passed since we last checked in on the warrior Andromeda and her ongoing adventure through Lordran. In this diary series I've been talking about some of the more memorable moments and experiences from my first Dark Souls playthrough. When we last saw Andromeda she had conquered the skeletons of The Catacombs, the booby-traps of Sen's Fortress, The Great Hollow, Ash Lake, and the Artorias Gravesite to battle the majestic Great Wolf Sif. In this entry, Andromeda ventures skyward up the cliffs of Lordran to get to the awe inspiring land of Anor Londo, to die.

The golden sun-bathed lands of Anor Londo. It's a golden shower!

Anor Londo/Painted World of Ariamis

This place is every bit as beautiful as it is dangerous. Going down the first set of stairs here I ran into three giant Sentinels with shields and halberds bigger than my entire character. The ground shakes when they walk, and they do heavy damage, but they are very slow and you can roll through their legs to dodge attacks if you're feeling frisky! My light-armored high-dexterity warrior has a really nice bow so I would stand from a distance and shoot them till they died. In this initial landing area there are 6 respawning Sentinels spread throughout the space and each gives you 1,500 souls when killed, plus there is a bonfire checkpoint in the middle of it all, so this is an okay place to farm for souls if you need to level up or save souls to buy the awesome things that the Anor Londo blacksmith has later on in the level.

Beyond the relative safety of the landing area things start getting ridiculous. Creatures that were bosses in previous areas now become standard enemies placed around Anor Londo, like the Gargoyles for example. Not only are the enemies very tough, but traversing the environment is really dangerous because you sometimes have to walk on the narrow flying buttresses that hold up the walls of the huge cathedrals. After crossing a flying buttress and climbing through a broken window I came into a cathedral that had a giant painting in it. When I approached the painting it let me interact with it, and the second I did I was pulled into some other place entirely. An incredibly deadly place within an already deadly place.

The entrance to the Painted World of Ariamis

The Painted World is a beautiful snow covered level, but it scared the crap out of me because it showed me enemies I've never seen before. There's these undead zombies that have huge red mutated torsos and they run up to you and spew fire all over you! Thankfully there was a bonfire in the Painted World, because I died a lot learning my way around it. I climbed up a tower killing albino rats and collecting loot, and when I got to the top of the tower I stopped to look around and admire the scenery. While I was standing there admiring scenery a big harpie (a human body with wings and a crow's head) swooped in out of nowhere, latched onto me, pecked my eyes out, and killed me all in one attack! I was so shocked I didn't know whether to laugh or to be angry so I sat there thinking WTF just happened to me? Did a giant birdman just come down out of the sky and murder me? Staying low and avoiding the harpies didn't prove any better. Down in the courtyard a phalanx of a dozen or more ghostly shield-and-spear warriors awaited. I avoided the phalanx as often as I could because when I alerted one of them, it alerted them all and they break their defensive form to start floating towards you to impale you.

There's a bit of tricky exploring that went on for me in the Painted World. If you are afraid of heights and it translates when you're gaming, you will not want to ascend the open-air spiral staircase in the middle of the level that leads to loot. The trickiest part was when I got stuck for a while on this bridge where a dragon rests. The dragon is actually broken into two pieces, his torso crawls around and spews toxins on you, and his legs are behind him serving as an obstacle. I killed the torso by running away from the dragon and hiding down a set of stairs in a tower to avoid his toxic breath, and then shooting him with arrows when I could. Once I got rid of the torso I was stuck looking at the beast's legs wondering how to move them or get past them. It turns out you have to execute a specific attack to get them to react and clear the way. I was mad when I figured out how simple it was and how long it had me confused. At the end of the bridge I fought Crossbreed Priscilla and it was a really cool boss battle because she turns invisible and the only way to deduce her whereabouts is to see her footsteps in the patches of snow peppered around the tower keep.

Crossbreed Priscilla with her scythe, long hair, and fuzzy tail

I guess you don't even have to fight Priscilla, she offered to let me pass through peacefully, but I decided to kill her. I wonder what her story is, I wonder what the story of Ariamis is, why is it in a painting? Nevertheless, I killed her after a grueling battle where I spent the majority of the time watching the snow for signs of her location so I could attack. The Painted World was really interesting and mysterious. Hours after exploring it I'm still wondering what it's all about.

When I finally got the chance to leave the Painted World and traveled back to the real world outside the painting I remembered, "Oh crap I'm still deep in Anor Londo. Doh!" When I left the cathedral that housed the giant painting, I found that I was in for a completely uphill battle. I ascended a large staircase leading up to what was apparently Anor Londo's largest cathedral and the focal point of the level. On the way up I had to fight with more giant sentinels, some winged demons that shoot lightning, and I got shot off the ledges of flying buttresses by knights that shot arrows the size of spears. And all of that was just on the outside of the building! Once I got inside I was going toe to toe with silver knights around every corner. I was able to deal with the knights well enough, but the one enemy that became a huge pain for me was a Titanite Demon that was skulking in a room way too small for it. I fought the demon in close quarters and it was absurd. I died twice trying to kill him, and I had to pull out all my most heavy armor just to have a chance of surviving his attacks long enough to kill him. That close encounter with the Titanite Demon led me to learn that I never want to go head on with one of them again, I now always try to shoot them from a distance if it's possible.

The inside of the main cathedral in Anor Londo was an old-fashioned dungeon crawl and I thought it was really cool. Room by room, chest by chest, battle by battle it really felt like an old-school dungeon dive but with the amazing Dark Souls combat I love instead of just pointing and clicking.

Gruesome twosome in effect

The final boss in Anor Londo is a single battle involving both the knight Ornstein and the giant Smough. I died so many times just trying to figure out what I should do with these guys. And once I had an idea of how I might survive, I still died a ton more just trying to execute the plan. With a lot of help and advice from 1Upper Chris Yarger I was able to grind my way to victory. For me, fighting Ornstein and Smough was like hitting a brick wall and trying to figure out how to impossibly squeeze yourself through any small cracks you can find in aforementioned brick wall. There's nothing I could do to make this easier. I put on my best equipment to suit the strategies, I put on my best suited rings and buffs, and still this was just like squeezing through small flaws in a brick wall.

First off you should know that my character has an incredible weakness to lighting damage. I can do okay with poison, fire, and magic defense, but my lighting has always been so low and even with a ring boosting that defense a great deal, my overall lightning defense was barely even average if that. So with that in mind, I had to face Ornstein's brutal lightning attacks over and over and only hope that I could survive. The thing about this battle that most shocked me was that when you kill the first of either of the two bosses, the remaining boss will become much more powerful. In my strategy I killed the giant Smough first, and knight Ornstein became a giant knight several times his original size and with much bigger lightning attacks. The game hits you with a tough 2-for-1 boss battle, then when you start making progress and kill one of the bosses, the game turns up the heat even more and demands you to rise to the occasion. I had to use a lot of skill and apply those skills consistently to give myself a chance in this battle, but in the end I think I needed a little luck as well. The crushed pillars around the arena were my saving grace, as I could hide from lightning attacks for a short moment before super Ornstein came up to me and I had to run for my life. With a strategy of running wildly, knowing when to hide behind a pillar, when to take a couple shots with a bow, when to get close and attack with my longsword, and when to heal, I was able to finish Anor Londo.

Getting through Anor Londo and the Painted World of Ariamis was an adventure in itself, and it took up this entire entry of the Diary! It was really challenging, but it was also incredibly rewarding. I was able to gain a ton of souls for leveling, as well as upgrading my armor and weapons. I took one of my battle axes and turned it into a lightning axe with the help of the blacksmith, and I was able to find lots of cool loot, and buy nice stuff. As tough as it is, Anor Londo seems to be layed out very fairly. As an aspiring level designer I can't help but analyze how the levels are structured, how the action is paced, and what the sum of all the smallest parts become. There are bonfire checkpoints in good places, enemies spaced out and placed well, good loot to find, fun battles, and a lot of reward for the risk.

Stay tuned for the next entry of the Dark Souls Diary and keep up with the warrior Andromeda and her adventure! Next time we are going to the Demon Ruins and beyond!