Wandering is the Point

I'm Ornery

I do not like most video games. They feel too sculpted, too clean, too sterile. Having grown up in controlled and sterilized environments I find myself practically allergic to anyone controlling my environment, nevermind me. This makes communicating any part of my worldview particularly difficult, nevermind sitting down to play some other numbskull's idea of fun. So I am phenomenally picky about video games. They either need to be areas where I can just run around or they need to be sculpted so freaking well that I can just enjoy it, as opposed to realize I've been taken for yet another ride.

And I hate that feeling, on a genetic level.

It's practically enough for me to break out in hives.

No, I don't think it's inherently a problem. Well, the hives part, probably yes. But my dislike of being in a sterile and controlled environment is not a problem, thank you very much.

Which brings us to Dark Souls and the secret area Ash Lake.

Dark Souls is Ornery Too

I have noticed something about "classics", actual classics: I usually have to take a long time to absorb them. It took me five attempts to read Brothers Karamazov, over the course of almost ten years. Les Miserables still sits on my shelf, incomplete. The Solar Cycle was shotgunned through rapidly, which I've been told is not the best way to go about it, but I knew that if I didn't just sit down and do it I'd never get it done. And yeah, that was phenomenally difficult to do, but I did it. It always feels like this wrestling of wills, as I try and get this new viewpoint into my skull and try and figure out what I think of it.

Dark Souls and I seem to have a similar relationship. I'm on year two and my second attempt. It's going better, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that cussing the game out and walking away for weeks was a common occurrence. But I've continued on my way, killing everything in my way indiscriminately, hoping that my zweihander could keep the stunlock going, upping my endurance so that I can continue an onslaught of damage. It's probably not the best build but I love seeing creatures stunned or proned. 

I heard about Ash Lake thanks to my brother-in-law, Kyle. He told me how to get there: strike down not just one but two secret walls, and make your way down The Tree. When you get to the bottom you will be there, at Ash Lake. I had seen pictures of the trees. The dragon. And that path of white sand, cutting through the navy water. I dunno, I just wanted to go. Why not? It was really that simple of a desire. But the barriers to getting to the secret route was.... not what I wanted to do. Blight Town is an awful awful place. I want to get out of here before I even go; poison swamps with fire-bugs? Nope. Nope. Nope. So walking further into that mess? Definitely not, thanks.

Well the other day, while trying to pick a peck of snide, somehow I stumbled acrost that tree, with two false walls inside!

And I thought: why not?

Oh NO.

(For those you who are blessed in your ignorance, that's a basilisk. It has a poisonous breath that kills you and then cuts your health in half until you can get the curse removed)

Yup, got cursed, half health! Now I could either go back or keep trying to go down. I've already got to get all the way back up to the surface to undo the curse. And that means getting back through Blight Town. I mean, that's going to be one heck of a trek and I just... I mean I may as well get to the bottom, right? Basilisks are bad, but they aren't impossible to deal with.

OUCH

So I am totally not at the right level to take those guys. It takes way too many hits to kill these fungusmen things, and so one on one became... impractical. I wound up running through, after several dozens of attempts. I practically wept at getting to that bonfire. I'd finally made it down here! After so many attempts I-

OH COME ON DARK SOULS!

A freaking hydra! Really?? Well, maybe I can just go around and-

Why.

Just WHY

ANSWER ME

Unable to avoid the hydra and unwilling to run back up and brave that tree so soon, I decided to go after the hydra. I figured I either had to git gud or just start over by this point, I was so unwilling to beat a retreat. So I went back at it. I kept dying, but each time I learned a bit more. And a bit more.

And then a head flew off.

And then I had a blind spot in the attack pattern. 

I only died one more time before finally putting the hydra down. I'm still trying to figure out how the heck that happened.

There are a few other creatures hanging around, but it's just white sands, worn away by the black-blue water. All these trees.... and then I found a grove of these trees, rising up out of the water. With a dragon. He shouldn't be here! Dragons are dead in the setting! Like, wiped out. With the exception of the Gaping Dragon (which is certainly not in its original condition) dragons were wiped out by Gwyn and the gods. The dragon was also sitting in front of a bonfire that had been boosted, which means that the dragon is female, given she is the flame-keeper. The idea of picking a fight with this young dragon seemed idiotic. I was cursed and was certain that I did not want to pick a fight at that point, not one I didn't have to. 

Wait, I can enter a covenant with the last true dragon?

Absolutely yes.

Now it was time to go back up; there literally wasn't anything around else here, beyond some weird clam monsters and a few items. Going back up wasn't quite the struggle I thought it would be. I've always found myself overestimating the difficulty of trekking back through an area; I got up pretty easily.

Now to take care of that freaking curse. I found the lady who sells them, and realized I had some farming to do. Not a problem!  I went killed a bunch of undead, over and over and over, until I thought I had enough. So I went back.

I had read it wrong. I needed another thousand. Groaning, I killed the thousand souls I needed and came back.

Now, I'm not entirely sure why, but that actually meant a decent amount to me. That messy little episode in my extended Dark Souls run is something I'm still pondering, days later, trying to understand what had happened. I'm not sure why that is. But it is. If I could find more video games that did that I'd play a heck of a lot more often. 

Whatever that is.