▲ 43 r/Silksong
Theory about the entrance to Pharloom Bay
Most speculations that I've seen about the entrance to Pharloom Bay have it being in Shakra's room in Bilewater (images 1 and 2), and for good reason. It has a crumbled gate leading to the right, where Pharloom Bay was located on older maps; it's right next to the big empty space on the map where Pharloom Bay used to be; it's small enough that a tunnel connecting to Pharloom Bay could easily fit; and once Shakra leaves, the only thing it does is host a one-time Covetous Pilgrim spawn. However, the more I think about it, the more I think that this entrance will actually be unlocked from the Pharloom Bay side; instead, I think that the main entrance from Bilewater will be in the room shown in images 3 and 4.
There are a few reasons I think this. First of all, the "stone wall propped up by wooden stakes" that we see here often indicates breakable walls in these games, and both Bilewater and the neighboring Putrified Ducts (assuming you didn't take the Groal route) are initially accessed via well hidden breakable walls, in Sinner's Road (either leading to lower Bilewater or the Mist) and outside the Memorium respectively. It would fit the level design philosophy of this region for Pharloom Bay to be similarly hidden. Second of all, as can be seen in image 5 (a map of Pharloom Bay as it existed in April 2021), there seems to be some kind of tunnel in uppermost right Pharloom Bay leading up and to the right; I believe this connects to upper right Bilewater, and this room seems like the perfect spot for it to do so. (This tunnel is missing from image 6, the map of Pharloom Bay in September 2021, but so is the submarine which is very likely to appear in Sea of Sorrow, so I think the April 2021 layout is probably closer to the final version than the September 2021 layout).
Most importantly, however, an initial entrance from Shakra's room would be entirely too lenient (from a Bilewater "sadistic game design" standpoint) and linear (from a "Sea of Sorrow progression" standpoint). While both rooms are gated by Faydown Cloak, if you enter via Shakra's room, you can effectively skip the upper sections of both Bilewater and Pharloom Bay in order to get to the Sea of Sorrow; this doesn't seem to be in line with the area design philosophy displayed in Silksong, where second area connections are usually closer to the end of an area (as with the aforementioned connections to Sinner's Road and Putrified Ducts). It makes Pharloom Bay a barnacle village pit stop en route to Sea of Sorrow with some optional exploration tacked on, instead of a full area you have to navigate, with the barnacle village and entrance to Sea of Sorrow as a reward at the end. It also makes the path to Groal more lenient if you can just skip most of upper Bilewater; this is the area that gives you a trick bench and hides the actual one extremely well, it's not going to let you shortcut through upper Pharloom Bay and skip all that carefully designed sadism.
Meanwhile, if the initial entrance is in the upper Bilewater room, it lets Team Cherry funnel the player through Pharloom Bay as an area in and of itself; exploring the upper part becomes mandatory in order to access the Sea of Sorrow, with the Shakra room shortcut opened from the Pharloom Bay side as a reward for completing that exploration. It also makes sure that you can't skip upper Bilewater, so that you really do have to explore in both Bilewater and Pharloom Bay to progress. This feels much more in line with the game's design sensibilities and forces you to actually engage with the entire expansion instead of just the Sea of Sorrow parts, so that it feels more like a natural part of the game progression instead of tacked-on content disconnected from the rest of the map. Plus, these are the people who put a closed gate between Fungal Wastes and City of Tears and never gave us a way to open it; making the obvious entrance a red herring only accessible from the other side is lenient in comparison.
(Also, before anyone says anything, I don't think there will be an entrance in Weavenest Murglin, whether as an initial entrance or as one accessible from Pharloom Bay. The only Weavenest that actually has a connection to another area (sort of) is Weavenest Atla, and that's an entire area in and of itself rather than a sub-area on the fringes of Pharloom, like Cindril, Karn, Murglin, and Absolom are (not even getting into Atla's other unique traits, like Eva). Instead, I think the Pharloom Bay assets in Murglin are there to make it an "off-theme room" meant to hint at an adjacent area without actually connecting to it, like the Marrow-themed room with the Skullwings in rightmost Weavenest Atla, the Sands of Karak coral at the bottom of the Slab, or the Ancient Basin-themed room in Deepnest where you get Sharp Shadow).
Thoughts?
u/Aykhot — 1 month ago
▲ 48 r/shittydarksouls
Having a power outage rn (Dark Souls reference)
I was going about my business on this stormy (like the King of the Storm) k***ht when suddenly the fire faded (the power went out). It was like some kind of age of dark. According to player messages (outage reports) it was because a tree (Aldia) fell on a power line (the First Flame). And so it is that ash (me) seeketh embers (the flashlight). On the way to the kitchen I got jumpscared by my cat (Tomb of the Giants reference) who was lurking in the dark (Darklurker reference). Then I made soup (estus) on the gas stove (Chaos Flame) and ate in the dark, like some kind of Darkeater (Midir). This proves that I truly do have a Dark Soul (hand it over). Thank you Michael Zachary for your immersive and interconnected environmental storytelling
u/Aykhot — 2 months ago
▲ 8 r/askgeology
Why isn't the Sahara red like the Australian deserts?
Most of the answers I've been able to find about why the Australian deserts are so distinctively red have to do with bedrock age and erosion; apparently Australia has a lot of really old, iron-rich surface rocks that oxidize in the absence of physical weathering like precipitation or freezing, and the latter is due to the continent having had a hot and arid climate for millions of years, without any geologically recent glaciations or humid periods. Based on this, one would think that the Sahara, which similarly hasn't experienced glaciations and has been near its current latitudinal span for millions of years, would also be mostly red, but it isn't; the Sahara generally looks more yellowish both in satellite images and on the ground, and the closest thing I can find to Australian red in satellite images is in the Horn of Africa. Did the African Humid Period or similar "green Sahara" periods prevent Australian conditions from being more closely emulated in northern Africa, or is there something different enough about the bedrock, geologic history, and/or erosion patterns in the Sahara to produce the yellowish deserts there? Additionally, are there any deserts outside of Australia that have similar conditions and/or reddish color?
u/Aykhot — 3 months ago
▲ 14 r/shittydarksouls
The College of Mensis are all lactose intolerant
Hear me out. As everyone knows, cheese gives you nightmares if you eat it before bed, and the moon itself is also made of cheese. The College of Mensis "toiled surreptitiously in rituals to beckon the moon" and transplanted their entire organization into the Nightmare, so it would make sense that in an effort to induce nightmares and therefore commune with the Great Ones of the dream, they would eat copious amounts of cheese. However, I believe this backfired horribly due to them all being lactose intolerant. The severity of their diarrhea killed most of them, which is why their mummified corpses are all sitting in the room beyond the One Reborn's arena; you see, "Mensis" is Latin for "month" and comes from the same root as "moon", and the Romans, who spoke Latin, used communal public bathrooms where everyone sat together on toilets, which indicates that the Mensis corpse room is a similar communal bathroom. However, some of them survived in the Nightmare, like Micolash: his bossfight provides several hints towards the fecal fate of the College. For one thing, his bossfight is absolute shit, just like diarrhea, and because of this people like to kill him with poison knives - a cheese strat, like the cheese he ate that gave him the diarrhea in the first place. For another thing, he has a stupid fuckass oneshot AOE attack that resembles clouds of gas erupting from a hole, just like a fart, which is not only another consequence of lactose intolerant indigestion, but referred to as "cutting the cheese". So if the College of Mensis shat themselves to death from lactose intolerance, where did all the shit go? It's the One Reborn. The principle of communing with the Nightmare via cheese was sound even if the bodies of the Mensis scholars were too weak to make it work, and the great mass of their dairy diarrhea was linked to the Nightmare, though it could not become a true Great One. We know this for a few reasons. First of all, the One Reborn literally looks like a big pile of shit, and it even has an attack where it leaks acidic fluid everywhere, just like when you have diarrhea. For another thing, its bossfight is also shit. Finally, it falls from a big dark hole that obscures the moon; dark holes are obviously anal in symbolism, which is why Michael had to change the name of Dark Ring to Dark Souls because Dark Ring is like Dark Hole which is an anus, and the moon, in addition to being made of cheese and thus hinting at the origin of the One Reborn, is also associated with asscheeks via the phrase "mooning". The One Reborn literally falls out of an asshole on a butt, just like shit. But where did the cheese come from in the first place? Well, most cheese is made with milk, and as it turns out, the Mensis scholars may have had access to milk that would allow them to commune with the Nightmare. At the very peak of the Nightmare of Mensis lies Mergo's Wet Nurse, a Great One in truth, and what does a wet nurse do? They feed babies with their milk. It's all connected, or some say interconnected. Bravo Michael Zaki
u/Aykhot — 3 months ago