Yea, that was a productive last 9 hours. No seriously I just played DS2 for 9 hours straight from start to finish on a bandit class just to see how fast I could do it. To be honest I could probably easily shave off 2 hours from that time just by not dying as much on the gargoyles and the Throne Watcher/Throne Defender boss fights (because those alone probably cost me like an hour and a half worth of repeated deaths just due to the way I chose to go about it). For those interested in specifics, I started out with a bandit class with an effigy as gift. From there I basically used the morningstar for all bosses up until I got the Drangleic sword, at which point I played around with it for a bit until the gargoyles, at which point I just swapped to the large club since I was two handing the whole time anyways. Fighting the Gargoyles without a shield is a much more dangerous prospect than anticipated, but I did do it eventually with a bit of luck. That club basically carried me through the rest of the game to be honest, and I never ran into any more huge death streaks until pretty much the area leading up to Demon Of Song, but that's mostly due to really annoying design choices by the creators of the game. Also I guess the second last boss of the game gave me a lot of trouble since fighting two enemies at once is never really fun, so that sucked. There's one nice thing about the club though and that's its ability to completely stun combo lesser foes with its two handed strong attack, which literally lets you combo enemies infinitely once they're downed (doesn't work so well on dark spirits sadly since their AI can get out of it if they roll on the first possible frame they regain movement on).
As for equipment, used mostly Drangleic armor up until I got Vengarl's gear (skipped his helmet because didn't feel like talking to him 7 times or something ridiculous like that). I did the 4 major bosses in what's probably the intended order as well for people trying to map my routing (granted I went to Shaded woods before beating gargoyles just to get the cloranthy ring +1 to help with that fight, which I kinda had to do anyways since I skipped the normal version found in Forest of Fallen Giants). Yea by no means am I a professional router for this, was mostly just messing about. As for other rings, Ring of Blades was great as usual (didn't bother with +1 cause I'd have to waste 5 minutes fighting Pursuer again), also had the ring from the chest outside the Old Dragonslayer (forgot it's name, it's the one that reduces hollowing, helped out a lot for when I got wrecked), and I also had the ring of Regeneration because it's pretty damn helpful over time. Didn't bother with the poise reduction ring you get from the troll thing by the witches, figured I could handle the early game without it and since I used the club later on I was consistently stun locking most normal enemies anyways.
In total my death count was probably just under 50 (haven't actually checked yet), with well over half of those probably being shared by gargoyles and the Throne Watcher/Defender. As for bosses I didn't die on, those include the Pursuer, Dragonrider, Old Dragonslayer, Flexile Sentry, Ruin Sentinels, Skeleton Lords, The Congregation (if you really want to call that a boss), The Duke's Dear Freja, The Dragonriders, Demon of Song, Velstadt, and I guess Guardian Dragon. I managed to die to every other boss at least once, but like I've said before top 3 easily go to Gargoyles, Royal Rat Authority, and Throne Watcher/Defender (in no particular order). As for why rat authority is up there, mostly due to toxic and the fact that apparently the light attack with two handed club just sails over the rats in Doors of Pharros unless they're in the middle of attacking you themselves, meaning I had to use a vertical attack to kill all 4 in addition to the boss itself, which is way easier said than done because that boss has really massive hitboxes for his attacks and they're pretty hard to dodge unless you've always got him in your sight. Not to mention the windup on that club makes sure you get bit by at least one toxic rat in the process. Actually I may have died more often there than I did with the Throne Watcher/Defender, but at least the bonfire is literally right outside the fog gate.
In any case, hopefully I can continue to get better in the game and maybe later on I'll try this run again with a similar build and see if I can do it just as quickly, if not faster than before. Not sure I'll ever go full on into speedrunning this game, but if I do I'll probably be doing any% glitchless all bosses runs. I've still gotta grab the DLC for this game though, will probably end up doing that tomorrow or something like that.
Now for actual channel news, finally got around to recording more Wind Waker today so look forward to that going up later this week. Still have a bit of Dark Souls left to upload from my recording binge last week. Hoping to actually have both games beaten soon. Zelda still needs at least 2 sessions but Dark Souls is probably like 3-4 sessions away from being done, unless I do the DLC in which case it'll be 5 or maybe 6 sessions. I still have to properly explore Tseldora and Doors of Pharros before moving on to Drangleic Castle, but if I'm quick enough I might be able to clear up to Looking Glass knight in one session, and after that I'd just need to clear out Demon of Song's area and hopefully get through the Catacombs, which would then be followed by the session where I clear Aldia's keep all the way to the final new area and maybe a few of the optional giant areas, and then I'd probably take care of Vendrick and the final bosses in the last session as well as wrap up any loose ends. Yea I kinda have this shit somewhat planned out, granted that's just a rough schedule because maybe things go well and it takes way less time to clear all these areas than I expected so I just blow through things. Either that or I die several times for an hour and waste a session on something like Demon of Song and its area or the Guardian Dragon fight. If there's one place that'll likely be trolling me it's those areas, and also I guess the final area of the game just because of the enemy difficulty, and of course the Throne Watcher/Defender, can't forget about them.
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